Death Therapy Read online

  “I have credit cards.”

  “I wouldn’t use them if I were you. Wait a minute. I haven’t carried cash for years. A strange job.” The President rose from his seat and went to an outer office. He was back in a few minutes with an envelope.

  “There’s a few thousand in there. It should last you for a couple of months. And by then you’ll know if you can surface again.”

  “Probably never, sir. It looks pretty bleak.”

  “Miss Wilkens, we’re not out of the box yet. Not by a long shot. We’re going to win.”

  And he ushered the surprised woman to the door and wished her good luck. She was surprised because of his confidence, and in her Iowa farmer’s way, she wondered if he were not just acting for her benefit.

  But what she could not know was that someone’s brilliant, perfect and thorough plan had a flaw. Precautions had been taken to prevent every existing American agency that could stand in the way of success from even reaching the President’s office. But the plan could not take into account an organization that did not exist—and a man who was officially dead.

  And now, if the President faced danger from unknown quarters and was unable to trust anyone, let his enemies be blissfully unaware. Because he was still able to unleash upon them the most awesome human force in the nation’s arsenal.

  The President bounded from his office with new energy and soaring confidence. He went to his bedroom but instead of getting undressed for bed, he took a red telephone from a drawer in his dresser. He dialed a seven-digit number, just as if it were an ordinary telephone.

  “Doctor Smith here.”

  “It’s me,” the President said.

  “I assumed as much.”

  “You must see me as soon as possible here. I will leave word that you are to be brought in to me as soon as you arrive.”

  “I don’t think that’s wise, sir. We could eventually be compromised and knowledge of us could compromise the government.”

  “That might not matter very much anymore,” the President said. “You must see me immediately. Your group may be the last hope of this government.”

  “I see.”

  “I guess you’ll be putting that person on alert, Dr. Smith?”

  “I’ll have to see what we’re dealing with first, sir.”

  “This is the greatest national emergency we have ever faced. You will find that out as soon as you arrive. Now, put that man on alert.”

  “You are talking to me, sir, as if I work for you. I don’t. And in the agreement that established us and the ensuing modifications, you cannot order the use of that person.”

  “I know you will agree,” the President said.

  “We’ll see in a few hours. I will leave immediately. Is there anything else?”

  “No,” said the President.

  There was a click on the other end of the phone. The man had hung up his receiver. And the President was sure that when that man discovered what had happened to the government of the United States and what was in the process of happening, he would unleash that person.

  The President returned the phone to the drawer and then from his pocket took the ten sloppy pages of typing given by Miss Wilkens before. He again read the entire contents. “Well, all right,” he said softly to himself.

  “They asked for it. Now they’re going to get him.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  HIS NAME WAS REMO and when he stepped up to the first tee of the Silver Creek Country Club in Miami Beach, he was mad. Not a raging anger, but a solid, definite annoyance that would not leave.

  It was 5:30 a.m., and the reddening dawn sky was just breaking into light as he whacked his drive down the empty fairway and handed the driver to the bushy-haired caddy in the bell bottoms. The caddy was still rubbing his eyes, apparently not planning to wake up until noon.

  He did not speak to the caddy as he marched toward the ball. He did not really even need a caddy, but if golf was his relaxation before his morning exercises, then, by god, he was going to enjoy it like a normal human being.

  He had some rights after all, even if normal procedure was violated at will every time Upstairs got a hair up its ass.

  He took the next club from the caddy and, barely setting himself, popped the ball toward the hole. Then he exchanged the club for the putter, walked to the green, banged in the ball and took his driver again.

  One would think, what with the awesome resources, the massive computers, the far-ranging network, that Upstairs would once, just once, come into something not as a loosey-goosey, the world’s going to end, top maximum priority, be ready by tomorrow—screwball pack of squawking geese. The man named Remo slammed the drive to the green. When he walked, he seemed to float. His movements were smooth and his golf swing was smooth, the club moving with what he had been told was incredible slowness.

  He was about six feet tall and average in build. Only the extraordinarily thick wrists set him apart from other men. His face was healing from his last operation and now, with his angular cheekbones and cruel, self-indulgent smile, he looked like an up-and-coming Mafia underboss.

  It was the new face after each assignment that got to him. He didn’t even have a choice. He would go to a small hospital outside Phoenix, leave with bandages, and then two weeks later, eyes blackened from the operation, facial muscles sore, he would see what sort of face Upstairs had decided to give him. Or maybe it was just left to the whim of the doctor. It was anyone’s choice but his.

  The putter was in his hands; feeling the roll of the green, he sent the ball on its way toward the cup. Before he heard the plunk, he was on his way to the next tee.

  Whack. Remo drove the ball down the fairway, hooking it from the long dog-leg left. He flipped the driver behind him and heard the caddy catch it.

  It was truly the new faces that bothered him. But dead men can’t be choosers, can they, Remo, he told himself. He waited by the ball as the caddy puffed his long way from the tee. The caddy’s breathless plodding rush toward Remo should have told him something, but he ignored it. The green rose 170 yards ahead. When the caddy reached him, Remo said: “Check out the flag placement, will you?”

  The caddy trudged off toward the green. Remo whistled softly to himself. The caddy seemed to take forever.

  Why was Upstairs always in a rush? His shoulder hadn’t even healed yet from that scrawny mobster in Hudson, New Jersey, who had passed out before Remo’s floater punch could land. Remo’s hand kept going and so did his shoulder. Now it was just completing its healing. Upstairs must have known that.

  The night before, when he had made his evening check from his hotel room, he had dialed the correct number on the scrambler attachment after hearing the first ring, and then he heard something that sounded as if the line were still scrambled.

  “Remo. Be at peak by tomorrow afternoon. I’ll meet you at 10 p.m., main restaurant, Dulles Airport in Washington. No time for new identity. Come as you are.”

  “What?” said Remo, checking the scrambler dial again.

  “You heard me. Ten p.m. tomorrow night. Dulles Airport.” Remo looked at the phone again. It was working.

  He stood, clad only in his undershorts, by the bed in his hotel suite. In the next room, he could hear the television blaring. Chiun was still in his third hour of soap operas. The air conditioner hummed almost noiselessly.

  “Doctor Smith, I presume,” Remo said.

  “Yes, of course. Who the hell else would answer this number?”

  “I had cause for wonder,” said Remo. “For one, I don’t peak, not even fast peak, in less than two weeks. And you haven’t even put me on alert yet. Two, you yourself arranged the Mickey Mouse switching of identities every time I go to the John. Three, if we’re going to run pell mell into everything, why do we have to bother with the plastic surgery? And four, the next operation I get returns me to something like what I looked like before I got suckered into this lash up. And that’s the last one.”

  “Chiun says you can function below pe
ak and work to it.”

  “Chiun says.”

  “Yes.”

  “What about what I say?”

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow night. Goodbye.”

  Then the click of the phone. Remo gently removed the plastic and aluminum scrambler device and with his right hand slowly squeezed until the circuits began to pop under the cracking plastic. He kept on squeezing until what he held in his hand was a solid rod of crushed electronics.

  Then he went to the next room where the television was on. Sitting two feet from the set, in a lotus position, was a frail wisp of an Oriental in robes, his white beard flowing from his parched face like the last strands of pale cotton candy.

  He was watching Dr. Lawrence Walters, psychiatrist at large. Betty Hendon had just revealed to Dr. Walters that her mother was not really her mother, but her father posing as an Upstairs maid in the house of Jeremy Bladford, the man she loved, but could never marry because of her teenage marriage to Wilfred Wyatt Homsby, the insane recluse billionaire, who was even now threatening to close down Dr. Walters’ new clinic for the poor, “Chiun,” yelled Remo. “You tell Smith I could function below peak?”

  Chiun did not answer. His bony hands remained crossed in his lap.

  “You wanna get me killed, Chiun? Is that what you want to do?”

  The room was silent but for Dr. Walters’ peroration on why it was important for people to accept themselves as people and not as others expected them to be.

  “I’m gonna unplug that set, Chiun.”

  A slender finger with a delicately tapered nail of almost equal length rose to the old man’s lips.

  “Shhhh,” said Chiun.

  Fortunately, the fadeout organ music came on and an obnoxious child jumped on screen, breaking up her mother’s card game to tell her about the state of her teeth. The mother seemed pleased. So did the other players, all of whom had four of a kind, and they demanded to know what dentifrice the child used.

  “You need not be at peak all the time, any more than a car must drive at ninety miles an hour all the time.”

  “When a car’s in a race, it helps to be able to move fast.”

  “Depending upon what or whom one is racing,” Chiun said. “A car need not run fast to beat a turtle.”

  “And the whole world’s my turtle?”

  “The whole world is your turtle,” Chiun said.

  “But suppose I run into a very fast turtle?” Remo asked.

  “Then you pay the final dues of our profession.”

  “Thanks. It’s always a comfort having you around. I’m into an assignment by tomorrow night.”

  “Work the walls then,” Chiun said. “And a word of caution, my son.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Anger will destroy you faster than any turtle. Anger robs the mind of its eyes of reason. And you live by your mind. We are weaker than the buffalo and slower than the horse. Our nails are not so sharp as the lion’s. But where we walk, we rule. The difference is our minds. Anger clouds our minds.”

  “Little father,” interrupted Remo.

  “Yes?”

  “Blow it out your ears.”

  Remo turned from the sitting room, back into the bedroom, and began to work the walls, first running toward one, then bounding back, then toward another and bounding back, then off a wall in a corner and onto the adjacent wall, and back and forth, from wall to wall, building speed, until finally he was moving like a blindingly fast tapeworm, around the room, on the walls, his feet not touching the carpeted floor.

  It was a good exercise. It was a good way to work off energy and anger, Remo thought. Chiun was right as he had always been right. The difference was the mind. Most men could use only a small percentage of their coordination and strength. At peak, Remo could use almost 50 per cent. And Chiun, elderly Chiun, the master of Sinanju, the trainer of Remo and the father Remo never had, could muster more than 75 per cent of his capabilities.

  It was merely doing all the time what most men were capable of doing only in rare instances.

  Remo waited for the caddy to plod his way back. He could not see the flag on the raised green, surrounded by the deep sand traps. The wind was moving left to right and the grass smelled deep and rich and good from the constant care. To the left of the fairway a few twigs cracked, as though crushed by a heavy animal. The noise came from a clump of trees bordered by hedges.

  The caddy returned. He was breathing heavily and barely got out the words. “Eight feet behind the lip of the green, just along the line of the sand trap. The green’s fast and the grain is toward you. The green slopes away from you downhill.” The caddy made a slanted motion with his hand indicating the angle of slope. “It’s a hundred and seventy yards. The way you been shooting, you ought to take a pitching wedge.”

  And then Remo realized he had not been playing his game. In anger, he had just been shooting for score, instead of carefully placing the ball in a sand trap here or in the rough there, and intentionally putting for imaginary holes several feet from the real hole. He had been playing his best possible game and in front of a witness.

  “You’re something else, Mr. Donaldson,” the caddy said using Remo’s latest name.

  “Give me the four iron.”

  “The way you been shooting, Mr. Donaldson? I’ve never seen anybody shoot like you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Remo asked casually.

  “Well, eagle-eagle is a pretty good start.”

  “You must be hung over,” Remo said, taking the four iron. “You’re not awake yet. I got a bogey and a par. I know what I shot. What were you smoking last night?”

  Remo set his feet very carefully and took two awkward backswings. Then he sliced a sweet curving shot 170 yards—70 yards forward and 100 yards into the next fairway.

  “Damn,” said Remo, throwing his club ahead of him in the plush fairway. “And I had a good game going.”

  The caddy blinked and Remo carefully watched his eyes to see if the caddy would forget those first two holes. The answer would be in his eyes.

  But the eyes said nothing, because they were no longer there. A red gash splashed through them to his skull, and Remo had heard the whirring of the bullet before he heard the crack of the shot from the clump of trees bordering the fairway.

  The shot spun the boy around, club bag spilling the irons and woods wildly onto the fairway. Remo ducked behind the spinning body, using it as a sandbag. When the boy hit the ground, Remo hit the ground simultaneously, flattening to the contours of the young man. Two more high-power slugs thwapped into the boy’s body. No crossfire, Remo thought. He could tell by the heavy impact on the boy that whoever was in the clump of trees was using heavy stuff. Maybe a .357 Magnum. He was also zeroing in.

  The boy’s body jumped again. Whoever it was, was using a single shot rifle. And because of that he was going to die.

  A pause, and the body thumped again. Remo was off. First fast, sideways without changing directions, a bullet behind him. Stop, slow roll to the right, letting the marksman overload. From right to left he moved, traveling the fairway like a pin-ball, closing the distance between himself and the sniper. And then he realized that there were three. A shot spit up mud at his feet, and then two men emerged from the bushes, one on each side of the rifleman, their faces blackened like commandoes, their uniforms dull green, their boots black and high and polished like paratroopers. They wore black stocking caps, and they came out wrong, moving one behind the other. The first man held a short machine pistol, inaccurate beyond forty yards.

  The golf shoes were no help. Real speed was hindered by spikes. Change of direction came not from equipment but from within. The great football players like Gayle Sayers had it, doing things that seemed impossible. And they were impossible to the eyes that believed balance was a matter of footwork. The best sole for movement was the sole of his foot, and the spikes were slowing Remo down, as he angled to set the three men in a line so that only one could shoot at him at a time.
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  A roll, a fast stop and another roll got rid of the spiked shoes with the help of short kicks; now Remo was padding the heavy damp grass of the fairway in his stockinged feet. Remo moved head-on into the forty-yard range of the first man, and the middle man brushed the front man slightly in an effort to establish his own line of fire. The front man stopped for a moment.

  Remo went into a straight speed line and was on the leader in a flash, his right thumb rigid, making a sweeping arc up as he closed in. By the time he was arms’ length from the leader, the thumb was driving and then the thumb bit deep into the first man’s groin, sending him careening back with a pathetic lip-surrendering “ooh” into the second man. The “ooh” was very soft, which was not surprising, since his left testicle was now adjacent to his lower lung.

  With his left hand, Remo brought his fingernails up to the shin of the second man who was trying to get off a shot with his machine pistol. The fingernails went through his face as if it were head cheese.

  And then, unbelievably, the sniper who was reloading, stood up and threw away his rifle. He did not reach for his .45 caliber sidearm, but stood in the karate sanchin dachi, feet curved in, pigeon-toed, arms curved slightly in front, fists rigid.

  The man was tall and lean and hard, the kind of man whose face gave Texas its reputation. His fists were the size of pound coffee cans. He towered over the hedges. Now he waited calmly for Remo’s assault, the glint of his teeth matching in brilliance the colonel’s eagles on the shoulders of his uniform.

  Remo stopped.

  “You gotta be kidding, Mac,” he said.

  “Step up, little boy,” the colonel said. “Your time has come.”

  Remo chuckled, then put his hands on his hips and laughed out loud. He stepped back, out of the rough. The man with the displaced testicle had passed out. The other, with the split face, was writhing on the ground in a growing bath of blood, his khaki fatigues darkening.

  The colonel looked at the two of them, then at Remo, and then began softly to hum to himself.