Spoils Of War td-45 Read online

  "Okay, okay, already. What's the legend, and what does it have to do with the fact that I slept for seven hours when I never sleep longer than ten minutes?"

  "I do not share the legends of my village with Philistines," Chiun said.

  Remo sighed. "I'm sorry, Little Father, but this'11 have to wait till later. I don't feel right." His own voice sounded far away to Remo, as if he were talking in a cave. He reeled to a far corner of the

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  motel room where they were staying. The air from the room's one window smelled sour.

  "Sit down, Remo. You are not yet well."

  "I'll be fine. Just need to move around." He curled himself into a loose ball in the corner and began to breathe deeply, expanding out of himself until he lifted himself effortlessly, supported by one hand as his body remained coiled above. Then slowly he unwound first his legs, reaching high into the air with his toes, then his torso. Stretched to full length, Remo bounced once experimentally and then went into the one-and-a-half spin.

  He landed clumsily, pulling a muscle in his thigh. Irritated with himself, he got to his feet, but as soon as he was upright, he felt a strange, dark sensation behind his eyes. Then the heavy, drunken sleep that had put him out for so long came back for him again. His legs shivered and buckled. "I can't stop it, Chiun," he said helplessly.

  In a moment Remo felt himself being picked up off his feet and carried to the bed. Chiun lay him gently on the covers and wiped Remo's face with clean cloths. "Do not try," the old man's voice called, sounding a thousand miles away. "But you must return, Remo. Understand this. You must return."

  As the old voice grew faint and disappeared, Remo found himself back in the sky, again falling through the heavens. His flesh burned. The flames were the only source of light in the vast blackness of space around him. And as he fell, he realized that the light that burned from his charring body was the light of Sinanju, the sun source of all his strength and will. And painful as it was, the light of Sinanju burning in his body was what kept him alive.

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  He had not always been alive, not in the way of Sinanju. A decade before, he had been a Newark cop sentenced to die in the electric chair for a crime he did not commit. After the electrocution, Remo Williams's fingerprints were moved to the dead file, and he had ceased to exist to everyone who cared, which was no one. An orphan with no friends, no family, and no future had died and been reborn in the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, under the direction of one Dr. Harold W. Smith.

  Dr. Smith needed a man who didn't exist to serve as the enforcement arm of an organization that did not exist, since the function of CURE was to violate the constitution.

  CURE was not conceived by thugs or corporate lawbreakers or crime syndicates: these could operate profitably within the Constitution, so they had no reason to violate it. The only group hurt by the Constitution, which had been written long ago as a set of guidelines for decent people to follow, were the decent people themselves, who had become victims of ever-widening crime in America. And so the ultra-secret agency CURE, headed by Dr. Smith, had been developed by a president of the United States just before his death by violent crime.

  When Remo awoke that day in Folcroft, he was informed that he no longer existed and taken to | meet Chiun, who was to train him in the purest and most ancient method of assassination known to mankind, Sinanju. That day was the beginning of his life, the only Ufe that would matter to him in years to come. For no one, not Dr. Smith, not Chiun, not even Remo himself, had expected the man who did not exist to become anything more

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  than a highly trained killer. They did not know that he would come to absorb Sinanju, to understand and be one with its difficult teachings, that he was Sinanju, and that he would become the next Master after Chiun.

  On that day, a lifetime ago, Remo Williams assumed his true incarnation, foretold by the most ancient legends of Sinanju. He became Shiva, the god of destruction. Shiva, the Destroyer. Shiva, the dead white night tiger made whole by the Master of Sinanju.

  The voice of universes rang out once more. "The legend comes to fruition. In the year of the dragon, a monumental force from the West will seek to destroy Shiva." It rang through the airless depths of space.

  And then Remo heard another voice, aged and high, from within himself. That voice said, "You must return."

  "I will return, Father," Remo said, and at that moment the sky was filled with light as the monster reappeared, it? deadly eyes glowing. It came nearer at blinding speed. Remo watched it come as he fell, unmindful of his burns.

  / am Shiva. I burn with my own light. There was no pain. Only readiness.

  The dragon attacked, and Remo flowed into the attack, unresisting, adjusting himself to the movements of the beast until he was part of it. Then, with the most gentle of countermovements, he was in the animal's ear, where sound roared through its chambers and off its small bones. Small for a beast the size of an aircraft carrier. The smallest of the bones was as big around as a telephone pole; the largest, the size of a mature Sequoia. Still, he could work

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  here. The confines of the dragon's ear at least provided surface area. Shinnying up the smallest of the ear bones, he felt the animal twitch. Then, as he descended, bringing his feet down at an angle that met with the least resistance, he broke the bone in four places. He did the same to the second and third bones.

  By that time, the dragon was stumbling and careening, unable to balance in its flight. It began its drop in space, faster, end over end, and Remo knew the beast was at last dying.

  "I can come back now," Remo said. And with an effort of will, he brought himself out of the blackness of space and into a gray mist, where his body felt cold. He shivered.

  "Come back," Chiun's voice said. And Remo willed his body to overcome the cold and lie still.

  "Awake," Chiun commanded.

  Remo opened his eyes slowly. Above him, Chiun hovered, wiping Remo's sweat-drenched brow with silk cloths. "It is done," Chiun said. "You have made the passage safely." Remo tried to rise. "No. Lie still. I will tell you what has happened."

  And Chiun told him of the rite of passage all Masters must endure before embarking on the final and most arduous part of their apprenticeship.

  "How long will that part last?" Remo asked.

  "Twenty or thirty years, for a good pupil. For you, perhaps half a century."

  "Swell. Just around the corner. Guess I'd better order my ceremonial robes."

  "It is written," Chiun said, ignoring him, "that a force from the West will come to challenge Shiva in the year of the dragon. According to the Korean calendar, that is this year."

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  "Hey. That's what the voice said in my dream."

  "I know."

  "How do you know what my dream said?"

  "Because the voice was mine. The Dream of Death comes to all persons, regardless of their ineptitude, who have mastered the most elementary levels of Sinanju. I saw that you were faltering, so I whispered the legend to give you direction and show you the way home. Had you listened when I attempted to tell you the legend earlier, you would not have had this difficulty."

  The phone rang. It was Western Union informing Remo that his aunt Mildred would be arriving at 11 a.m. on Sunday. That meant that Remo was to call Smith at exactly 11 p.m. through the seven-digit code routed through Lexington, Kentucky, Bismarck, North Dakota, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania before reaching the phone on the desk at Folcroft Sanitarium.

  "For Pete's sake," Remo said, hanging up the phone.

  "For the emperor's sake," Chiun corrected. "You should not refer to the mad emperor who pays tribute to the Master of Sinanju as 'Pete.' "

  "If s just an expression, meaning Smitty's gone on a code rampage again. Aunt Mildred. Nuts."

  "It is only logical that the crazed emperor's family would also be crazed. These things are hereditary."

  Remo picked up the phone, then put it down again. "Chiun, are
we allotted only one dream a lifetime?"

  "Would you care to repeat the experience?"

  "No."

  "Then one dream is enough."

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  "What was yours about? The dream you had when you were fifteen?"

  Chiun looked up at him, his wispy eyebrows arched. "That is a highly personal matter," he said.

  "It is? There was nothing personal in my dream."

  "Your dream did not bring you shame, thanks to my keen direction."

  "You? Shamed? That's a laugh."

  "Highly shamed." Chiun's features took on a look of profound suffering. "In my dream I was informed that in the golden years of my life I would be forced to train a white meat eater to take my place as Master."

  "That doesn't sound like any Dream of Death to me."

  "That is because you are incapable of dying of

  shame."

  Remo dialed the Fojcroft number direct. The ring was answered with a surprised "Hello?"

  "What's up?" Remo said.

  He could hear Smith sputtering at the other end of the line. "It's ten-thirty-one," the bitter, lemony voice snapped. "And what about Aunt Mildred?"

  "She told me to give you a message that she left town to become a rock music groupie."

  "Very funny. Since you can't keep a secure line, you'll have to meet me at code point a-three-oh-one-five-two." Smith pronounced the code number slowly and precisely. "Repeat, a-three-oh-one-five-two."

  "Get off it, Smitty. You know I don't follow your paranoid codes. Tell me in English."

  Smith worded his answer carefully. "Where you were sent once before, en route to an encounter two states west with a bald-headed man."

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  Remo scoured his brain. Then it came to him. "Texas?" Remo groused. "Come on. We're in Portland, Oregon. Can't you make it someplace closer?"

  Smith exhaled a little gust of air into the telephone. "Make that a-four-one-six-oh-eight," he said quickly. "Look it up in the code book." He hung up.

  Cursing, Remo tossed open the telephone directory in the motel room. It was a complex code. The beginning letter indicated the letter of the alphabet under which the location's name would begin. The five numbers following had to be matched to five numbers in the directory. Since Smith had every telephone directory in the country on file in his computer banks in Folcroft, the code could change every time Remo changed location, with little chance it would be detected. Remo's finger slid down the interminable column of numbers under the "A" listing. When he reached 416-0852, he stopped. The first digits matched Smith's code. He moved his finger to the left, to the name "Addison, Charles H." The location was Addison airport. Remo threw the directory on the floor with a crash.

  "Where are we going?" Chiun asked.

  Texas," Remo said.

  At two A.M. in February, Addison Airport in Galway, Texas, was the bleakest spot Remo could imagine. When the twin-engine Cessna 310 deposited its lone passenger on the otherwise deserted runway, Remo knew why Smith had chosen this as their meeting place. It was because this was the one spot on earth where Smitty looked completely at home.

  The lemon-faced man in the gray overcoat, gray wool scarf, gray ten-year-old fedora, and black ga-

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  loshes walked briskly past Remo and Chiun, to a battered pickup truck. He entered and drove away.

  Remo rolled his eyes. "Smitty makes the KGB look like gossips," he said.

  "Emperors are always addicted to secrecy."

  "Who's going to see us here?" Around them, the freezing Texas wind roared through the deserted airfield. Far, far in the distance, a dim light glowed from the watchman's gate.

  They walked over to a late-model pink Cadillac that was sitting where its owner had left it. With a fast three-finger drill on the locking mechanism, Remo jammed it open and got in. Outside, Chiun waited, whistling an old Korean folk tune, his orange robe fluttering in the wind. Remo got out and opened the passenger door. "Excuse me, Little Father, but I thought you would open the door yourself."

  "The Master of Sinanju is not a doorman," Chiun said, getting in the car.

  Remo went back around to the driver's side and got in. Deftly, he manipulated the wiring, and the car hummed to a start and sped silently out of the airport.

  "Right or left?" Remo asked as they approached the road. "Which way'd he go?"

  "Right, idiot."

  "How do you know?"

  "All white men, when given a choice between right and left, veer right. It is an advantage we of the East have had for centuries."

  "We of the East? You including me?"

  "Contain your false if eager pridefulness, o brainless one. 'We' could have referred to any of two billion Oriental persons."

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  "It could have, but it didn't. Admit it, Chiun. You slipped."

  The compliment put Remo in a good mood. He hummed as he gunned the Cadillac down the winding Texas road. The name of the tune he was humming was "Disco Lady." He could not recall where he had picked it up, but he remembered some of the words, and sang them:

  Disco Lady

  Won't you be my baby? Girl, you got me crazy Disco La—

  "Halt!" Chiun thundered.

  Remo skidded the car to a stop, causing it to swirl in an elaborate loop and careen off the road into a ditch of frozen mud.

  "What is it?" Remo whispered, his eyes straining to pierce the darkness miles away.

  "It is that revolting melody, with its equally repugnant message."

  "Damn it, I drove off the road!" Remo yelled. He got out to look at the damage. "We'll have to Hit it out," he said. "It's too deep to push."

  "We?" Chiun asked, his hands on his hips.

  As Remo was hoisting the two-ton Cadillac back onto the road, the battered pickup truck with Smith at the wheel reappeared, coming from the other direction. The passenger door opened. "Get in," Smith said, his face looking more lemony than usual.

  Smith drove silently to a small cabin off the main road and unlocked the door. When Remo and Chiun entered, he was taking off his galoshes. He lit

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  a candle, then removed his hat, coat, and wool scarf. Beneath them he was wearing the three-piece gray suit he had worn every day since Remo had first met him. Sitting at the candlelit kitchen table in the cabin, Smith looked exactly as if he were at his desk in Folcroft Sanitarium.

  "A number of men are disappearing from military bases in different parts of the country," he said. Remo hopped up and sat on the unused wood-burning stove. "C'mon," he said. "They've been doing that since Vietnam. It's called desertion. Or it used to be. Now with this brand-new wacko volunteer army, it's probably one of the new career specialties. Join the army and run away." Chiun slapped his .arm. It stung. "Silence. Do not speak to our emperor thus," he hissed. "Oh, mighty Emperor Smith, do not punish the young fool too harshly, for he is yet, despite all my effort, a brainless thing. A simple thrashing with wet whips would suffice." He whispered in Korean to Remo, "You deserve to be beheaded, idiot. Let the lunatic emperor talk."

  "Nobody gets beheaded in America," Remo said. "It's a good thought, though. Maybe that'd stop the army desertions. We could make a deal with Sweden and Canada. Give them a few bucks for every deserter's head they send back." He shook his head. "They probably wouldn't do it, though. Too bad. The French'd do it. The French'd do anything for a buck. Except work."

  "We have reason to believe they're not deserting," Smith said. "In the first place, the missing soldiers aren't recruits. They're chaplains. And nobody knows how they're disappearing or why. According to the president's reports from the Pentagon, none

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  of them took anything with them—no money, no snapshots from home, nothing to indicate that they left voluntarily."

  From his vest pocket he extracted a neatly folded map of army bases around the country. Some of the bases were circled, with arrows leading from one to the next. "Fort Antwerth in central Iowa was the first camp to be affected. Then Fort Beso
n in southern Kansas, followed by Fort Tannehill in New Mexico." He traced the route of the disappearances with his finger. "Whatever's happening, it's moving southward. The next attack, if there is one, should either be at Fort Wheeler in Oklahoma or Fort Bor-goyne here in Texas, about a hundred miles due south. You're midway between the two points now. The plane that brought me in has orders to wait for you. You can get to either base in less than an hour."

  Remo studied the map. "It could be a nut job," he said.

  Smith looked at him drily, awaiting further explanation.

  "Some psycho murderer on the outside who doesn't like army preachers," Remo said. "A sniper or something. Can't the army's M.P.'s look into it?"

  Smith shook his head. "The reports at all three of the camps where the chaplains disappeared have been negative. Not a trace."

  He was silent for a moment, as if deliberating whether or not to tell Remo the rest. After a moment he said, "There's more." He took a miniature tape recorder from his coat pocket.

  "Strange things have begun to happen at these camps immediately following the disappearance of their chaplains," Smith said. "The commanders' re-

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  ports are virtually identical. First, the chaplains disappear. Then there's mass confusion among the enlisted men. For a day or so, the reports are frantic. The officers can't get the recruits to listen to them. Discipline is at zero. Offenders are placed under military arrest, but apparently just about every enlisted man on the base is an offender, and the guardhouses can't hold them all."

  "So what do the C.O.'s do then?"

  "Nothing. There's nothing they can do but wait for it to pass. At all three camps, the confusion disappeared totally within two or three days. That's been the pattern."

  Smith fidgeted in his chair, uncomfortable with what he was saying. "Here's where the reports become really odd," he said quietly, his eyebrows raised. "If this weren't thoroughly documented from three unrelated bases, I'd have difficulty believing it," he waffled.

  "Smitty, you have difficulty believing in gravity," Remo said. "Just tell me, and we'll work out the plausibility studies later."