Death Sentence td-80 Read online

  "The second message was not signed at all," Chiun pointed out.

  "A lapse on my part."

  "I see," Chiun said vaguely. "Tell me of this assignment of Remo's. It is very unusual?"

  "It's too complicated to explain," Ransome assured him. "But I expect him to remain there at least another three weeks, gathering evidence."

  "I understand," Chiun said softly. But he thought: What madness is this? Remo is not a compiler of evidence. Such duties are for file clerks and detectives. Remo's task to is eliminate enemies.

  "Here," Ransome was saying as he transferred his gaze from his computer screen to a notepad. He wrote furiously and handed the top sheet to the Master of Sinanju.

  "Her name is Naomi Vanderkloot. That is her address. Eliminate her. Today."

  "Do you wish it to appear as an accident, or would something more public be preferred?"

  Ransome's mouth became a red rosebud. "Public?"

  "Yes. Something to warn your enemies that such will be their fate should they dare uncover your secrets. "

  "No. That would be counterproductive. But I don't mind if it's messy. In fact, why don't you make it look like a rape?"

  Chiun stiffened. "A rape?"

  "No, better," Ransome said, licking his pursy mouth. "Like she was gang-banged to death. Can you arrange that?"

  "I will consider it," Chiun said distastefully.

  "Excellent. By tonight. There's no telling what that woman is up to. I will make the arrangements for your travel. Please wait in the downstairs lobby."

  "As you wish," the Master of Sinanju said, bowing formally. He noticed that the gesture went unheeded as Norvell Ransome picked up the telephone and began dialing.

  Chiun withdrew. As he rode the elevator down, he looked again at the address on the sheet of paper Ransome had given him. He was not reading the address. He had memorized it at first glance. He was comparing the loops and swoops of the handwriting with the notation on Smith's forehead. They were the same. Chiun placed the scrap of paper in a hidden pocket of his kimono as he stepped into the lobby.

  The guards looked at him warily, and he ignored them, for he was deep in thought.

  It was unfortunate. If Smith died, it would be the end of Chiun's work in America, richest of Sinanju clients. The man called Norvell Ransome was hardly worthy of Sinanju service, but in time he could be educated in kingly ways. He was, in some respects-both good and bad-very much like Nero the Good. Too bad. There were so few Neros in the modern world....

  Chapter 22

  "Please don't leave me, I beg of you," Naomi Vanderkloot wailed.

  "Do you mind?" Remo Williams said impatiently. "I need that foot to walk with. Let go."

  "Not until you promise to stay. I want you."

  "I can tell. I can't remember the last time I had a woman get down on her knees like this. Don't you feel embarrassed-you, a professor?"

  "No. It's my mating strategy. In primate courting behavior, the female withholds her favors until she finds a male primate with whom she's willing to mix gene pools. You're him. For me, I mean. Take my genes. They're yours."

  "I don't want your genes," Remo said, bending down and prying her fingers off his ankle. They jumped to his calf. Remo rolled his eyes ceilingward. "I've heard of women who fall for cons, but I never thought it would happen to me."

  "That's not it at all," Naomi protested, hurt.

  "Look. If I stay, will you behave? No more notebooks or pencils?"

  "I swear."

  "Okay. "

  Naomi Vanderkloot jumped to her feet. Her face was a quarter-inch from Remo's. Her eyes were wide with appeal.

  "Now?" she asked breathily. "I'm feeling very labial all of a sudden." That goofy smile came on again. Only this time it was more like a leer.

  "Labial?" Remo said.

  " 'Horny,' to you."

  " 'Horny' I understand," Remo said. He was surprised at himself as they walked back to the bedroom. He was not looking forward to this at all....

  An hour later, it was growing dark. Remo was lying back on the pillow, smoking thoughtfully. He was handling it better now.

  "You probably think I'm some kind of space cadet, don't you?" Naomi asked quietly.

  "Maybe. If I knew what a space cadet was."

  "I'm not some ivory-tower type, you know. I don't just teach. My work at the Institute for Human Potential Awareness is important. We even do contract work for industry."

  "Industry trying to design a better man these days?" Remo asked in a dry voice.

  "No, human homogeneousness is not static. Population group studies show definite phenotypical trends. For example, people's rumps are getting wider."

  "I hadn't heard that," Remo said, thinking: What a space cadet.

  "It's no joke. We did work for the airline industry, measuring fannies so they would know how much to widen the next generation of airline seats."

  "Can't have people getting stuck, now, can we?"

  "Before that," Naomi went on brittley, "I did fieldwork. You probably never heard of the Moomba tribe."

  "Not me. I can't even do the mambo."

  "They were a culturally isolated group of hunter-gatherers discovered in the Philippines. I was the first woman-the first person, really-to be admitted into the Moomba secret rituals."

  "Oh, yeah?" Remo said, interest flickering in his voice. "What was it like?"

  "I was hoping you wouldn't ask," she said, picking through his chest hair. "Do you know in lower primates what I'm doing now would be the postcopulation checking for lice?"

  "No, and I wish I was still in ignorance of that arresting fact."

  "There are a lot of carryovers from primate behavior."

  "Tell me about the rituals."

  "Well, I've never told anyone this," Naomi said, looking up at him. "I refused to write a monograph about it. The head of the anthropology department at my last teaching position thought I had become initiated into some kind of primitive magic society, but it wasn't anything like that. I was a young, idealistic anthropologist then. I guess I couldn't get along in the modern world that well. I thought doing fieldwork with primitive cultures, which I had more empathy for, would work for me."

  "Didn't, huh?"

  "It took six months to gain the confidence of the Moomba tribe. Then one night we went into the rain forest to this circle of banyan trees. We all got naked together."

  "Group sex?"

  "I wish. Starting with the chief, we all took turns squatting in the center of the circle and . . . defecating into shallow wooden bowls."

  "Sounds like that would be worth six months of preparation, yeah," Remo said dryly.

  "That wasn't the worst of it. When everyone was done-and that included me-the chief took a so-called magic stick and measured each stool. Mine was the largest."

  "Congratulations. Did you win a prize?"

  "You might say so. They presented me with the magic stick and explained that I was now the consecrated measurer of stools."

  "You lucky anthropologist, you. What happened after that?"

  "That was it. That time. At the next meeting of the society, we did the same thing, only I did the measuring. Then we all sat around discussing the relative merits of one another's turds. Oh, God, this sounds so ridiculous now."

  "Now?" Remo asked.

  "I had gotten myself inducted into a primitive shit-appreciation society. That's all they did. Measure and discuss stools. When they got bored with that, they discussed color and texture and firmness of stools. Not to mention legendary stools of their ancestors. It was depressing. For years anthropologists had been speculating on the probable meaning of the ritual. It would have made my reputation, but I was too ashamed to publish my findings."

  "I can see where you might be," Remo said, blank-faced.

  "I was crushed. I had idealized these people as closer to nature than civilized people, imbued with elemental wisdom, and all that. And for recreation, they played with their feces like toddlers. That was
it. I gave up fieldwork and ended up at U Mass with the other unemployable academics.

  "Well, your story explains one thing," Remo remarked.

  "What's that?"

  "Why you keep trying to measure me," Remo said. "Must be a carryover from your primate ancestor experiences."

  Naomi Vanderkloot had no answer to that, and Remo smiled for the first time that day.

  His smile lived as long as it took him to inhale, for he happened to glance through the fern-choked window and saw a silent figure pass on the street like a figment from a dream.

  Seeing the color seep from Remo's face, Naomi gasped. "What is it? What do you see?"

  "A ghost," Remo said, reaching for his clothes. "As yellow and wrinkled as a raisin, and coming up your walk."

  The door chimes rang and Naomi frantically scrambled for her clothes. She and Remo were dressed by the time the chimes sounded a third time. Before there could be a fourth, the rip-squeal of tortured hinges told them that they needn't bother to answer the door. It was open.

  The Master of Sinanju had decided that he would not kill the woman known as Naomi Vanderkloot immediately. First he would question her about the source of her knowledge of Remo. The Nero-like Ransome had not considered that an important matter, but the Master of Sinanju knew that Smith would have made it a priority. And so would Chiun, who considered himself to be still working for Smith.

  When the woman did not bother to answer the front bell, even though the sound of her respiration came clearly through the thick oval-windowed door, Chiun decided not to bother with the door. He sent it inward with a short-armed punch and stepped over it, careful not to injure his sandals on the broken glass. A thin-faced woman with a long nose peered around a doorway molding. Her mouth flew open and she cried, "It's him! The Mongoloid!"

  "Still your tongue. I am no horse Mongol come to loot and pillage. I am Korean."

  "That's what I said. A Mongoloid. Do you know you carry Japanese genes?"

  Chiun's eyes made walnuts at the base insult. Before he could speak, another face joined hers at the door. And this time it was Chiun s mouth that flew open in surprise.

  "Remo!" he gasped.

  The pair came out of the room. They walked out with their round white eyes even rounder than normal, giving them, to Chiun's eyes, comically identical expressions. The girl cowered behind Remo, as if for protection.

  "You're Chiun, aren't you?" Remo asked in an uncertain voice.

  "No. I am not Chiun," the Master of Sinanju snapped. Even for Remo, it was a stupid question. But to Chiun's amazement, the retort did not bring a like response. Instead, Remo descended into imbecility.

  "Well," he said, "whatever your name is, I thought you were dead."

  "Who told you that?" Chiun demanded.

  "Nobody. I saw it in a dream."

  "I have been in Sinanju. And why are you not in prison?"

  "You know about that? Then you do know me?"

  "Certainly I know you. You are Remo." Chiun hesitated. His slit eyes narrowed. Had it happened again? The thing he most dreaded? Had the spirit of Shiva once again supplanted Remo's true personality? But no, his face lacked the stern demonic cast. And he was babbling. Shiva, the Hindu God of Destruction, would never babble. Still, something was amiss.

  "So you hear me, O Shatterer of Worlds?" he asked loudly.

  Remo and the white woman looked at one another and then behind themselves. Seeing nothing, they returned their stupid gazes to the Master of Sinanju. "Who are you talking to?" Remo asked.

  "I wish to speak with Shiva, the Destroyer."

  "That's a Hindu god," Naomi whispered. "I think."

  "Never heard of him, or it," Rerno hissed back. Chiun tensed. Certainly Remo knew of Shiva. He did not remember the last time Shiva had overtaken his personality, during the time of the Japanese occupation of Arizona. And it soon had passed. But it was the fear of another such spell that had sent Chiun back to Sinanju to seek a remedy in his scrolls.

  Remo would not know that either. But he knew that Shiva dwelt within him.

  "You do not know Shiva?" Chiun asked padding forward. "Yet you know that you are Remo."

  "Of course I'm Remo," Remo said, shaking a cigarette from his pack.

  "What are you doing?" Chiun screeched, pointing to the cigarette dangling from Remo's mouth.

  "Smoking a Camel," Remo replied coolly.

  "You smell like you have been smoking camels-as well as cows and other malodorous creatures. But I was referring to the tobacco thing in your mouth."

  Remo struck a match and lit the cigarette. Chiun reacted. He flew at Remo and plucked the cigarette from his surprised lips. He shredded it with furious finger motions.

  Remo stood there in surprise. Naomi screeched and leapt behind Remo.

  "Protect me, Remo!" she yelled. "He burns his sugar faster than anything I've ever seen!"

  "Emperor Smith is gravely ill," Chiun said, ignoring the woman's obviously demented babbling.

  "Emperor?" Remo's voice was blank.

  "I wonder if he means Harold Smith?" Naomi said suddenly, peering out from behind Remo.

  "Of course I mean Harold Smith," Chiun snapped. "And what do you know of Smith?"

  It was Remo who answered. "He's the judge who sent me away."

  Chiun blinked. In a mock-calm voice he said, "So you remember that much."

  "I've had twenty years on death row to reflect on it," Remo said tartly, his tone so disrespectful that Chiun was tempted to discipline him. But the vibrations Remo gave off, as Chiun stood close to him, were wrong. They were not Remo's vibrations, nor Shiva's. They were ... off.

  "Twenty years," Chiun said. "You mean twenty days, do you not?"

  "No, I mean twenty years."

  "I have had the misfortune to train you for more than twenty years, and I know where you have been. And it is not in prison."

  "Then it's true. The dreams."

  "Tell me of these dreams," Chiun demanded.

  "You and I. We were doing incredible, impossible things. And Smith was in the dreams. And a place called Folcroft."

  "Those were not dreams, but a reality you have somehow lost," Chiun said sagely.

  "If that's so, then why did you let me languish in prison?"

  "I returned to Sinanju to attend certain matters, and while I was sojourning there, the new emperor informed me that you had returned to prison on an undercover assignment."

  "Undercover!" Remo burst out. "I was almost buried there."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I was on death row!" Remo said hotly. "They had me scheduled for execution at seven o'clock this morning. I went over the wall."

  The Master of Sinanju indicated the woman with a fingernail like an ivory spear.

  "And this woman," he said slowly. "How is she part of this wild story of yours-aside from your usual reason?"

  "What's my usual reason?"

  Chiun's nose wrinkled in distaste. "Sex."

  "I resent that insinuation," Naomi Vanderkloot said sharply. "I'll have you know that I'm a full professor."

  "Although I must admit that she is more attractive than your usual cowlike consorts," Chiun added.

  Remo looked at Naomi. "She is?" he said incredulously. Naomi shot him a hurt look.

  Chiun asked, "You are the woman Naomi Vanderfloot?"

  "Kloot. Vanderkloot. It's Dutch."

  "I do not differentiate between peas," Chiun sniffed, "although some are less green than others. It is the same with Europeans. You have forbidden knowledge of Folcroft, which you are spreading in newspapers. How did you come into possession of this knowledge? Speak truthfully, for your life depends upon this."

  "He told me," Naomi said, indicating Remo.

  "Yeah, I told her," Remo said. "What is Folcroft anyway? I keep dreaming of it. And you."

  "Do you remember Sinanju, Remo?"

  "No. What is it?

  "A gift," Chiun said sadly. "Of which you are seldom worthy." And the Master of Sinanju beg
an to turn in place, his saffron kimono skirts belled up and out like a parachute. He caught flashing glimpses of Remo simply standing there like any common white oaf, the woman cowering behind him.

  And Chiun struck.

  Remo's hands shot up instinctively as he dropped into a defensive crouch. One of Chiun's sandaled feet snapped out, and although the blow was restrained, it sent Remo spinning. At the last possible moment, Remo had parried the blow with one wrist.

  Chiun alighted and pushed his skirts down as Remo, his face shocked white, slowly gained his feet. He bowed.

  "Your mind may not remember Sinanju," he said solemnly, "but your body does. And for that I give thanks to my ancestors."

  "Know anything about what he's saying?" Remo asked Naomi, not taking his eyes off the Master of Sinanju.

  "Asians are culturally fixated on ancestor worship," Naomi said quietly. "But the rest of it must be some belief system. That's cultural anthropology. I don't do cultural anthropology any more." Raising her voice, she asked, "What do you want here?"

  "I have been sent to kill you."

  "Over my dead body," Remo snapped, returning to his crouch as Naomi slipped behind him. She grabbed the back of his T-shirt in nervous fistfuls, and Chiun noticed for the first time that it was neither stark white nor jet black, but a pleasing saffron. He wondered if this Remo might not be an improvement over the old.

  "Your body is already dead," Chiun said. "For you are the dead night tiger of Sinanju legend, the avatar of Shiva. I could, if you wish, show you the grave where your government buried you."

  "I knew it!" Naomi snapped. "It's a government plot. It's-" Her face went white. Her mouth made shapes but no sounds.

  "Spit it out," Remo prompted. "What are you trying to say?"

  "A clone!" Naomi shrilled. "The real Remo is dead, and you're a genetic clone of him created by the CIA. Not an evolutionary mutant. You're probably filled with yucky artificial ingredients. Oh, my God, I slept with a clone. What will my mother think!"

  Remo looked toward Chiun. "Any idea what a clone is?"

  "No, but it does not matter. Listen to me, Remo. Do you wish to know the truth about yourself?"

  "Yeah."

  "Will you accompany me to Folcroft, where the answers lie?"

  "What do you think, Naomi?"