The Final Crusade td-76 Read online

  "Hey!" the guy had shouted up at Remo.

  Remo, who had climbed the plaster-chunk-strewn steps of the apartment building to the roof because he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, at first attempted to ignore the man.

  "Hey, you. Up there!" the man repeated.

  Remo pointedly stared off toward the Passaic River and the gray spire of Saint Andrews Church. He used to go to Saint Andrews as a boy. Every Sunday at eight in the morning, and none of this modern alternative-service-on-Saturday-afternoon crap either. He had been raised by nuns. They were strict. Especially Sister Mary Margaret, who ran Saint Theresa's Orphanage, where Remo had spent the first sixteen years of his life. He never thought he would feel nostalgic about Saint Andrews or the orphanage. But he did. He wished he could drop in and say hello to Sister Mary Margaret and tell her thanks for being so strict and for showing him the right way. But he couldn't. Saint Theresa's had been razed years ago. He had no idea what had become of Sister Mary Margaret.

  Down the street, the peach sweatshirt was determined to be heard.

  "Hey, buddy, I'm talking to you-you bastard!" Reluctantly Remo looked down at the man.

  "Go away," he said. His voice was even, quiet. But it carried.

  "You gonna jump?" the peach sweatshirt called up.

  "No chance," Remo said.

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah."

  "You look like a jumper."

  "And you look like the worst judge of character since Neville Chamberlain. Now, beat it."

  "I think you're a jumper. You got that look. Kinda sad. I'm staying."

  "It's a free country. Despite Neville Chamberlain." Remo stared north. He tried to spot the old Rialto Theater. It used to be on lower Broad Street. There was nothing on Broad Street. Just a row of storefronts that looked like Hiroshima after the bomb fell. He wasn't surprised that the Rialto had been shut down. This part of Newark, New Jersey, had gone to hell a long time before. But it would have been nice to see the old marquee. Remo felt nostalgic about that too.

  Down on the sidewalk the peach sweatshirt was talking. "I think he's gonna jump," he said. Remo looked down. The fat guy was speaking to two teenagers with green hair and black leather clothes.

  "Oh, wicked," the pair said in unison.

  "Hey, guy," one shouted. "We're here. So what's the holdup?"

  "Oh, great," Remo mumbled.

  "He said he wasn't going to jump, but look at him perched up there. What else would he do?" This from peach sweatshirt.

  "Probably a druggie," one of the green-haired teenagers was saying. "They're always going into abandoned places and doing weird shit. Hey, man, if you're going to jump, could you do it by seven o'clock? I wanna get home in time for Wheel of Fortune."

  "I'm not jumping," Remo repeated in a weary voice.

  "Then what are you doing up there?"

  Remo didn't answer. He wasn't exactly sure. He wasn't supposed to ever come near Newark again. Someone might recognize him as Remo Williams, a patrolman who once walked these streets to protect its citizenry. The same Remo Williams who made headlines when he was sent to the electric chair for the senseless beating death of a local drug pusher. Remo hadn't committed that crime. He wasn't believed. They pulled the switch, and when Remo regained consciousness, he was told to forget his past existence.

  It hadn't been hard at first. What was there to cling to? He was an orphan who pulled a tour of duty in Vietnam, and a conscientious beat cop whose life had ended tragically. No parents. Few friends. There had been a girlfriend. They had been engaged. The ring arrived at his cell one night, without a note, and only then did Remo give up all hope and resign himself to the inevitable.

  Now, twenty years later, Remo could barely remember what she looked like.

  All his friends had deserted him on Death Row. That had been part of the frame, which was what it was. A man named Harold W. Smith had engineered the whole thing. It was Smith who had warned Remo never to come back to Newark ever again. It was not the whim of a hard-nosed government official, although Smith was all of that. It was a matter of national security. Remo had broken the rule a couple of times before. But national security had not been compromised in either case.

  So what? Remo thought. So what if they discover that Remo Williams is still alive? It wouldn't necessarily link him to Smith, head of the supersecret government agency known as CURE, which had been set up to fight crime outside of constitutional restrictions. There would be a lot of ways to explain Remo's continued existence. The world would never have to know that Remo Williams had been trained in the ancient Korean art of Sinanju to be America's secret weapon in the unending war against her enemies. There wasn't a document or file anywhere that linked Remo Williams to the House of Sinanju, the finest assassins in history. There was no record of Remo's long service to America. He had saved the country from certain ruin several times. Saved the world at least twice that he knew of.

  And all he wanted, right now, was to put the two parts of his life together.

  Staring out at the shattered pieces of his old neighborhood, he could not. It was as if there were two Remo Williamses. One the orphan boy who grew up in an uncertain world, and the other the heir to the five-thousand-year tradition of Sinanju, which served pharaohs and emirs long before there ever was an America, and which now served this newest and greatest power on earth.

  Two Remo Williamses. One an ordinary man. The other, one of the most powerful creatures to walk the earth since the age of the tyrannosaur. Two men with the same memories. But still two different men.

  Somehow it didn't seem real anymore. It was hard to look back and accept the early past as his own. Had he ever been that young and that confused?

  Down in the street, the three gawkers were now seven. The newcomers were calling for Remo to jump. "C'mon man. Get it done with!" a black man called. "We don't be having all night."

  "One last time," Remo called down. "I'm not jumping."

  "And I say he is," said peach sweatshirt. "He just needs to get his courage up."

  "That right. He don't wanna audience 'cause he afraid he'll wimp out and everybody laugh."

  "That right, Jim?"

  "Anybody know what happened to the old Rialto?" Remo called out.

  "Closed now, man. Video."

  "Too bad," Remo said. "I saw my first movie there. It was a double feature, Mr. Roberts and Gorgo. They don't make double features like that anymore."

  "That right for damn sure."

  "I went with an older kid, Jimmy something," Remo continued vaguely. "We sat in the first row. The orchestra pit was in front of us. I remember it was a scary black hole. I asked Jimmy what it was and he told me that was where the monsters sat. When the film started, my eyes kept switching back and forth between the screen and the pit."

  "Sounds like a good reason to jump to me," someone said. And everyone laughed.

  "For the last time, I'm not jumping."

  "You could change your mind," peach sweatshirt said hopefully.

  "If I do change my mind," Remo warned, "I'm going to make a point of landing on top of you."

  Peach sweatshirt took a quick two steps backward. Everyone stepped back. They moved out onto the street. Cars had to stop for them, and when they did, drivers got out to crane their heads in the direction of peach sweatshirt's excitedly pointing finger.

  The word "jumper" raced through the gathering throng.

  Remo groaned. If this got on the evening news, Smith would kill him. Why did it always go like this? Why couldn't he just be left alone?

  Being alone was what this night was supposed to be about. Remo reached for a loose brick near his hand. He wrenched it out of the crumbling mortar with an easy flick of his wrist. Holding the brick in one hand, he began whittling off sharp slivers with the heel of his other hand. The tiny shards shot off from the brick like angry hornets. One tore through peach sweatshirt's hood. He howled at the annoying sting. A second shard caught him in the knee. Peach sweatshirt fell to th
e ground clutching his leg.

  With a rapid-fire series of strokes, Remo sent more brick shards flying. He made it look easy. For Remo, it was. But only years of training in the art of Sinanju made it possible. Years of training in which he first learned to become one with an inanimate object, so that if he wished the brick to come loose, he knew exactly where to take hold of it, exactly how much pressure to apply, and from what angle. A casual glance at the brick's surface told him the weak points-the places where he would get maximum disintegration with minimum force.

  He chopped more shards free. The brick was disappearing in his hand. Down below, the crowd was being peppered by a dry stinging rain. The pedestrians began to retreat. A few broke into a run. Drivers scrambled for their cars and got the engines started even as brick slivers cracked their windshields.

  Within a matter of seconds, the street was clear of traffic.

  Remo smiled. He still had half the brick left. He replaced it in the cornice and stood up.

  He wondered what Sister Mary Margaret would say if she could see him now. No, that was the wrong thought. If she could see him now, all she would see would be a young man of indeterminate age. Dark hair, brown catlike eyes, high cheekbones, and unusually thick wrists. Nothing special, at least on the surface. Remo's clothes-a white T-shirt and tan chinos-would have brought a disapproving tsk-tsk from Sister Mary Margaret.

  But surface appearances are deceptive. Remo walked to the chimney. It was in the shadow of this chimney one humid summer night that he sat under the stars drinking a beer from a bottle, watching the heavens, and wondering where he would end up, now that he had been drafted into the Marines. Then the world was about to open up to him. He had no inkling of where it would all lead.

  He had wondered what Sister Mary Margaret might have said on that night too. The thought made him feel guilty. But he had a right to the beer because he was of age. Still, he had felt guilty.

  It had been a long time since he'd felt guilty about his actions. There were a lot of bodies in their graves because of Remo Williams and the work that he had been trained to do. Criminals, enemies of America, yes. But bodies nevertheless. Sister Mary Margaret would have been horrified. Funny he would think of Sister Mary Margaret again. Probably because Chiun wasn't around. Remo had wanted to get away from Chiun, from Smith, and from Folcroft Sanitarium, where he now lived-if occupying a cubicle in an insane asylum could be called living.

  At first, it had been a welcome relief from all the years of hotel rooms and safe houses. But after a year, it had begun to grate on his nerves. It was not real living. And Smith was always around. Chiun was always around too, but then, Chiun had been around for most of Remo's adult life. Like Sister Mary Margaret during his childhood.

  And so Remo had come to the brick building where he'd lived in a dingy walk-up apartment after leaving the orphanage. He moved back in after Vietnam, and left it a second time only to go to jail. Now the apartment house was deserted. The apartment itself was inhabited by rats, with drug paraphernalia in the halls and obscene graffiti everywhere.

  Once, Remo had dreamed of buying the whole building. But after all these years of unsung service, America couldn't even give him a home to call his own.

  Remo had started for the roof trap when he sensed movement below him. He didn't hear anything. The moving thing was too silent to make a sound. Instead, he felt the eddies of disturbed air on his bare forearms. Remo's instant alertness relaxed slightly.

  "Chiun?" He said it aloud. "Little Father, is that you?"

  A bald head poked up from the open trap. The parchment face of Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju, regarded Remo wisely.

  "Who else moves like a breathless wind?" Chiun's squeaky voice demanded. A wise smile animated his wispy beard.

  "Me. "

  "No, not like a breathless wind. You move like a breaking wind."

  "I'll settle for second best," Remo said amiably.

  "Breaking wind is not second best, breaking wind is unpleasant. And smells bad."

  "Oh." Remo frowned. "That kind of breaking wind."

  "What other kind is there?"

  "Never mind," Remo said. He sighed. Chiun was in a snotty mood. He could sense it. That was not so bad. When Chiun displayed his good side, it usually meant that he was trying to con something from Remo. Remo wasn't in the mood for the happy Chiun tonight, but a snotty Chiun, he could take. No Chiun at all would have been better.

  "Pull up a brick," Remo suggested.

  "I will stand," Chiun said, rising from the trap like a child's balloon. He settled on sandaled feet, his green kimono fluttering with motion. Chiun tucked his longnailed fingers into the garment's belling sleeves and waited. After nearly a minute of silence he cleared his throat noisily.

  "Did I forget something?" Remo asked.

  "You forgot to ask me how I knew that you would be here. "

  "I stopped being surprised by you a long time ago."

  "Very well, since you will not ask, I will answer anyway."

  And Remo leaned against the chimney and folded his arms. Might as well listen.

  "You have been acting strangely all week," Chiun pointed out.

  "I've been thinking a lot lately," Remo returned.

  "As I said, strangely. For you, to think is strange, possibly weird. This is how I noticed. Then you disappear without telling me."

  "Can't I just go for a walk?"

  "You took a bus."

  "I got tired of walking. So what? And how did you know I took a bus? Smith's computers tell you that?"

  "No, I knew you would be going. And Smith's secretary told me you did not have her call for a taxicab. You are too lazy to walk far, therefore you took the bus." Chiun smiled placidly.

  "Okay, I took the bus. Big deal. But I don't believe for a moment you knew I was going to leave. It was a sudden impulse."

  "It has been building up inside you for six days, no more, no less."

  "Six days?" Remo said vaguely. "Let's see, today is Friday." He began counting backward on his fingers. He went through his left hand, and then ticked off his second thumb and called it Sunday. Remo's frowning expression burst into surprise. "Hey! That's right. I started feeling this way last Sunday."

  "Precisely," Chiun said.

  "Okay, Sherlock. If you have it down to a science, what's bothering me? I hadn't exactly sorted it out myself."

  "It is many things. A yearning for home is paramount. I sensed that. from the start. That is why I knew you would come here, to Newark. You have known no other place in your sorry existence."

  "It hasn't been so bad."

  "Have you visited with Sister Mary Margaret yet?"

  "Now, how did you know I was even thinking of her?"

  "Before me, you had no one. But Sister Mary Margaret raised you."

  "All the nuns raised me."

  "But she is the only one you ever speak about."

  "Well," Remo said, "I haven't seen her. I don't even know where to find her, or even if she's still alive. The orphanage is long gone."

  "Your past is long gone, but I understand your yearnings. Sometimes I miss the village of my youth, the pearl of the Orient called Sinanju."

  "How anyone could miss that mud hole is beyond me."

  Chiun looked around him disdainfully.

  "I could say the same of your sordid environment."

  "Touche," Remo said. "But you haven't finished. What am I doing here?"

  "You wish a place you can call your own. You thought that place was to be found in your past. But having come here, you now understand that you have outgrown this place."

  "Fine. I admit it. Just to avoid prolonging this conversation. There's nothing back here for me. Not even Sister Mary Margaret. Besides, she never visited me once on Death Row."

  "And it still hurts."

  Remo looked away quickly. "She probably figured I was guilty, like everyone else. Or maybe she didn't know."

  "After all these years, it still haunts you. That you migh
t have disappointed her."

  "Not me."

  "No, not you. Never you. For as long as I've known you, you deny your deepest feelings."

  "Something's missing from my life, Chiun. I really feel it now that I've seen Newark again."

  "Yes, Remo. Something is missing. And I know what it is."

  "What?"

  "Me."

  "No, I don't mean you." Chiun's face shrank.

  "Don't take it personally," Remo said dryly. "But I did live a few years before Smith put you to training me."

  "An unimportant prelude to your existence," Chiun said dismissively. "Banish those years from your mind."

  "I feel empty, Chiun."

  "You are filled with the sun source. You are the first white man so blessed. Although it was a long struggle, with you fighting me every step along the path, I have made you whole. I have made you Sinanju."

  "Empty," Remo repeated. "See that?"

  Chiun looked. His clear hazel eyes narrowed questioningly.

  "That spire?" he demanded.

  "Yeah. I used to go to church there."

  "So?"

  "I haven't been to church in a long time," Remo said wistfully. "Maybe I should go."

  "Why do you not, if it means so much to you?"

  "I don't know. I haven't thought about religion in years. I guess I feel self-conscious."

  "White as you are, I do not doubt it," Chiun said critically.

  "Don't be that way. I meant self-conscious about the things that I do. I was a Catholic, you know. We're supposed to confess our sins to cleanse our souls."

  "Ah, I understand now. You are embarrassed to confess your terrible heinous sins."

  Remo's face lit up. "Yeah. That's it."

  "You think that forgiveness is beyond the priest's province."

  "Something like that. You really understand, don't you?"

  "Yes. And let me allay your fears. Go to the priest. Confess your transgressions, and if he balks at forgiving you, tell him that the Master of Sinanju has forgiven you for the years of insults and humiliation you have heaped upon his frail shoulders. And if he further hesitates, tell him that if the victim of your many sins is so forgiving, how can a lowly priest be any less generous?" And Chiun smiled.