Date with Death td-57 Page 3

  "All right already. I'll find somebody else."

  The youth dug into the folds of his gown. "Wait a minute. I want you to see something." He pulled out a shiny black automatic. "Do you know what this is?"

  "I can take a wild guess," Remo said.

  "I have been forced to protect myself against the evildoers of the world with this weapon. It pains me to carry it, but there are those who would actually rob the donations I've collected."

  As he spoke, he fingered the gun lovingly. "If it weren't for this, I'd be helpless," he said.

  "You're breaking my heart."

  The young man's eyes never left the automatic. "It's really a man-stopper, you know," he said dreamily. "If I decided to use it, I could get anything I wanted with this baby. All I'd have to do would be…" Slowly he turned the barrel of the gun to face Remo.

  "That's it, huh?"

  "You got it. Where's that roll of bills you were flashing?"

  "In my pocket. And it's going to stay there, Gunga Din."

  That was the point at which Remo stuck his finger into the barrel.

  Things happened fast after that. The Krishna squeezed the trigger, but by the time the bullet left the gun, Remo had twisted the barrel into a loop pointing skyward.

  "How'd you do that?" the Krishna gasped.

  "Like this." Remo picked the young man up by his ankles and twirled him into the configuration of a pretzel.

  "It's only money!" the boy yelled, trying to disentangle himself. "In the end, money isn't worth much."

  "Neither are you," Remo said. With a little spin, he thrust his arms upward. The boy spun twenty feet into the air.

  "Establishment brutality!" the Krishna squeaked. He seemed to hover a speck in the sky.

  Remo stood silently on the ground below, his arms folded.

  "Well? Aren't you going to catch me?"

  "Nope." Remo said.

  "Then what's going to happen?" the youth called.

  "Ever drop an egg into an empty swimming pool?"

  The Krishna screamed. He negotiated as he descended. His saffron robe was wound around a pair of skinny legs. "Okay," he said huskily, trying to keep his voice calm. "You win. Here's the deal. You catch me, and I walk away, all right?"

  Remo considered. "I think I'd rather watch the old egg trick." Remo slapped him skyward again.

  "The can. You can keep the can with all the donations in it."

  "No thanks. Money is far too evil and corrupting. Death is much more satisfying. Especially yours."

  The boy was sobbing. "What do you want, mister? I'll do anything." He was low enough now that passersby could see his red jockey shorts beneath his robe.

  "Anything?" Remo asked.

  "Anything. Please, mister. Just catch me."

  A second before impact, Remo stuck out his toe, grazing the boy's back so that he turned in a gentle somersault that broke his fall. Then Remo caught him by the scruff of the neck.

  "You said anything, right?"

  "Yeah," the youth said sullenly.

  "Yes, sir," Remo corrected. "Or I send you right back up."

  "Yes, sir!" the boy shouted.

  "Good," Remo said. "You've got potential."

  "For what?"

  "The army. You're going to join."

  "The army? Are you crazy?"

  Remo exerted the smallest pressure on the base of the boy's neck.

  "I mean, yes, sir!"

  A yellow taxi pulled up alongside them. "Now I get a cab," Remo sighed. He handed the driver a hundred-dollar bill. "Take this twerp to the Army Recruiting Center," he said.

  "I got no change," the cabbie said.

  "Call five of your buddies on duty to come here, and you can keep it." He shoved the boy into the back seat and slammed the door. "Uncle Sam needs you," he said in parting.

  Like a kick in the pants, Remo thought after the cab pulled away. Well, what the hell. It was worth a try, and it was better than killing the kid. Even a professional assassin couldn't go around murdering every cretin who rubbed him the wrong way.

  But what had made him think of the army, Remo wondered as he began the endless task of carting Chiun's trunks from the motel room to the waiting taxis. His own time spent in service had been so long ago. Long ago and better forgotten, along with the rest of the life that used to belong to him.

  More than ten years since he'd left the army to become a cop.

  More than ten years since he'd ceased to exist.

  According to all his records, Remo Williams was a dead man. He had died in an electric chair for the crime of killing a dope pusher. It had been all smoke and no fire, though, a clever magician's illusion. In the end, Remo had not been fast-fried. This was a twisted bit of poetic justice, because he hadn't offed the pusher to begin with.

  It was all part and parcel of an elaborate frame-up engineered by one Harold W. Smith. All the strings had been pulled from a comfortable chair that was parked in front of a computer console secreted away in the depths of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York. Like some mad prestidigitator, Smith had pulled off one macabre trick after another to make Remo into the nonperson he wanted. A fraudulent arrest, a fraudulent trial, and then a fraudulent death, cheated by Smith's sleight of hand. The performance had been planned down to the last detail, even to the substitution of another body for Remo's.

  All this had taken place for the sole purpose of providing Harold Smith with a man who officially did not exist. Remo was a perfect candidate: an orphan without family ties, a rogue cop who was dead, buried, and soon to be lost to memory.

  After Remo regained consciousness a few days after his bogus electrocution, he learned the bizarre destiny that he was expected to fulfill. Remo was to be the sole enforcer for CURE, an illegal organization developed by Harold W. Smith for the United States government. CURE's purpose was to fight crime outside the limits of the Constitution.

  Smith's orders for CURE came directly from the President of the United States— the only other individual besides Smith and Remo who knew of the organization's existence. Even Chiun, Remo's trainer and teacher, had no real knowledge of how CURE worked. As far as Chiun was concerned, he was preparing Remo for the task of protecting Harold W. Smith after Smith had usurped the crown of the United States and proclaimed himself Emperor of America.

  It was how the ancient Masters of the Korean village of Sinanju had earned their keep for thousands of years. Sinanju was a poor village, with nothing to trade for food. Its only asset was a physical power that in lesser hands, in later years, came to be known as martial arts. The Masters of the fighting techniques of Sinanju were the greatest killers on the face of the earth, and it was this ability they eventually rented to rulers of other lands in order to support their village.

  Traditionally, each Master of Sinanju trained a pupil to take his place after he was gone. Untraditionally, the present Master of Sinanju— Chiun— had been saddled with a full-grown white man as his apprentice. That was part of Harold W. Smith's contract with Chiun. The old Oriental was to train Remo Williams in exchange for a submarine full of gold bullion to be delivered yearly to the village of Sinanju.

  At first, Chiun had thought it would be an impossible task to teach a soft, meat-eating white the secrets of the most difficult discipline of all the martial arts. But with time, even the old Master had to admit that Remo possessed an almost uncanny aptitude.

  Remo, for his part, resented having his identity snuffed out by a computer system, and resisted strongly Smith's mandate that he become a professional assassin. There was something vaguely un-American about the vocation Smith had chosen for him.

  But Smith talked and Remo thought about the day an assassin's bullet snuffed out the life of the very president who had founded CURE. It was obvious that such evil could only be countered by an equally deadly force. Two minutes after his inauguration, the new president was offered and accepted the awesome burden of CURE'S continued existence.

  The memories faded as Remo walked back
into the motel room for the thirteenth time.

  "Let's go, Little Father," Remo puffed as he picked up the last three trunks.

  Chiun waved him away distractedly. He was sitting on one of the beds in the room, engaged in rapt conversation with the chambermaid.

  " 'All My Relatives' is pretty good," she said know ledgeably, "but there was nothing like 'As the Planet Revolves.' It was my all-time favorite." She stubbed out a cigarette in an ashtray overflowing with lipstick-tipped butts.

  "Mine, too!" Chiun squealed. The white hair on his head and chin bobbed in agreement.

  "That Rad Rex is a dreamboat." She shifted her pink nylon uniform around her massive thighs. "What a hunk."

  "And Mona Madrigal," Chiun rhapsodized. "The loveliest of women. Perhaps she is Korean."

  "Maybe so," the maid said, creasing her forehead with thought. "I mean, she was short and everything. It didn't say so in this magazine article I read. It just said she got divorced."

  "What a pity," Chiun said, clucking in sympathy. "But then, only the most extraordinary of men could please one so beautiful as Mona Madrigal."

  The maid shrugged. "I dunno. It said she was living in Santa Fe."

  "Don't you have some work to do?" Remo asked irritably.

  The maid snorted and lumbered to her feet. Chiun patted her hand. "Don't mind him," the old man whispered. "Some people have no soul."

  "It's a side effect that comes from breaking your back," Remo groused as he shuffled out of the room with the trunks.

  Harold Smith was heavily disguised. Instead of his usual three-piece gray suit, steel-rimmed glasses, and briefcase, he was wearing a brown three-piece suit, steel-rimmed glasses, and carrying a briefcase. It was as much imagination as he had ever shown.

  "Don't act like you know me," Smith muttered as he passed Remo and Chiun in the airport corridor. "Meet me at Gate Twenty-seven."

  "As you wish, Emperor," Chiun said, bowing low. "We will tell no one that we are to meet you at Gate Twenty-seven. Your loyal assassins are at your service at all times, O illustrious one…."

  "I think he wants us to ignore him, Little Father," Remo said.

  "Nonsense. No emperor wishes to be ignored. It is why they desire to be emperors."

  "Smitty's not an emperor," Remo said flatly. He had explained Smith's status to Chiun almost daily for the past ten years.

  "Of course not. Heh heh. One does not wish to be called emperor while the current emperor still holds the throne. Heh heh."

  "Forget it," Remo said.

  Gate twenty-seven was crowded with passengers lining up for boarding. Smith pretended not to notice the dark-haired young man with the exceptionally thick wrists and the old Oriental dressed in flowing robes as they sat next to him in the waiting area.

  "You're late," he said, his New England accent twanging acerbically.

  "Best I could do," Remo said.

  "Well, never mind that. There isn't much time. You're to board that plane." He nodded toward the line of passengers moving up the ramp.

  "Where're we going?"

  "New Mexico. There's been a rash of unexplained murders in the mesa."

  "So? They've got police in New Mexico."

  "A rash. More than three hundred in a matter of weeks. All unidentified. Mexicans, by their clothes and features. No similarities as to age, sex, occupation— only in the method of execution. They all died of single bullet wounds in the head."

  "What about the FBI?"

  "They've been called in, but they've gotten nowhere. At first they suspected that the bodies belonged to Cuban spies, but they've given up on that. Then the CURE computers came up with a couple of interesting facts. One is that the murders seem to correlate to a dramatic increase in reports of missing persons coming out of Mexico."

  "You mean they were missing in Mexico, and dead in New Mexico?"

  "They're not the same people. For the past few weeks, most of the people reported missing have been young women. None of the murder victims found in the desert have been young women. Not one. It's the only consistency in the pattern."

  "Doesn't sound like much of a lead. What's the other information?"

  "It may not be anything, but there's been a sudden increase in air traffic in and around the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. That's in the same general area as the murders."

  "Air traffic? Are they shooting these guys from helicopters?"

  "No. The wounds on the bodies were inflicted at close range from a handgun. A Ruger Blackhawk. It's one killer who's doing all the damage, but he won't be easy to find. The mesa's a big area. And if this business goes on much longer, the press is bound to get hold of the story and terrify the whole Southwest. When that happens, the killer will almost certainly go into hiding, and we'll miss any chance of catching him. The president's concerned."

  Remo nodded. "I thought my cop days were over," he said.

  "Somebody has to do it," Smith said, rising. It was his favorite phrase, covering every unpleasant task Remo had to perform, from killing unlucky witnesses to swabbing up bodies.

  "By the way, I've arranged to have a car for you at the airport in Santa Fe," Smith said. He slipped Remo a circular wire with two dirty keys dangling from it.

  "Smitty, you're a prince."

  "An emperor," Chiun hissed.

  "Save your flattery," Smith said. "I knew you'd need a car, and this was the only way I could think of to keep you from stealing one. It's a blue 'fifty-five Chevrolet."

  He walked away. On his seat were two tickets. When Remo picked them up, Chiun snatched them out of his hands.

  "I thought he said Santa Fe, but I could not believe my good fortune," the old man shrieked.

  "Uh, yeah," Remo said uncertainly, taking the tickets back. "Santa Fe's supposed to have some nice sunsets."

  "No, no. That is not why we are going to this place. It is where Mona Madrigal lives."

  "Oh," Remo said. Gently he nudged Chiun into the boarding line. "That's great. What a fantastic coincidence."

  "This is no coincidence," Chiun said stubbornly. "Is the daily rising of the sun a matter of coincidence? Obviously, Emperor Smith, in his divine and radiant wisdom, has seen fit to reward an old man for his many years of service. He has arranged for me to meet the lady of my dreams."

  "Little Father," Remo said softly. "I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I'll lay odds Smitty's never even heard of Mona McGonigle, or whoever she is."

  "Madrigal," Chiun snapped. "Do not be duped into believing that all men are as shallow and ignorant as yourself." He elbowed his way through the crowd to sit in his assigned seat.

  "Insult me all you want," Remo said, "but Smitty's not going to come through on this one. We're going to Santa Fe on assignment."

  "A mere ruse. If you knew the ways of emperors as I do, you would realize that this dead body business is merely a ploy to bring us to the city where Mona Madrigal dwells."

  "So you can meet her," Remo said.

  "Now you understand."

  ?CHAPTER THREE

  After slowly savoring the last morsel of chocolate torte, Miles Quantril put his fork down and patted his lips with a starched white linen napkin. "You may clear now," he murmured. He daubed his mouth one last time for good measure and then dropped the napkin on the china dessert plate.

  An elderly, white-haired servant materialized at Quantril's side. Quickly and silently he cleared away the luncheon dishes, taking great pains not to spill a single crumb on Mr. Quantril's Savile Row suit. The butler had once made that mistake, and by way of reprimand, Quantril had kicked the servant in the buttocks. On particularly cold nights, the butler's hindquarters still throbbed dully even though the incident had taken place more than a year ago.

  In his long career as a butler, the elderly gentleman's gentleman had worked for viscounts, barons, lords, and kings. None of them had ever put a boot up his butt for any reason. But then, none of them had ever paid half as well as Mr. Quantril. Now that he was nearing the age of retirement,
the butler decided that money was a great deal more important than dignity. You couldn't bank a lifetime of good manners and refinement. So he would remain at his post until the end, and he would be especially careful not to spill the crumbs.

  When the servant slipped silently out of the room, Quantril picked up the magazine beside him. It was open. From its pages, Quantril could see his own picture. He enjoyed reading about himself.

  At thirty-three, he was tall and handsome and faultlessly groomed, from his razor-cut hair right down to his carefully manicured nails. Today he was dressed in one of his 280 custom-made suits, along with a color-coordinated shirt, tie, and pocket handkerchief. His black Italian loafers had been shined to mirrorlike perfection.

  Miles Quantril lived up to the image of him projected from the pages of Time and Newsweek and People. Born of Old Money aristocracy, he was one of the richest and best-looking bachelors in the country. He was surrounded by wealth, pursued by beautiful women, and driven by work. "America's Favorite Tycoon," the magazine in his hand proclaimed. "Where Does He Go Next?"

  "Where indeed?" Quantril whispered, his gaze passing over his penthouse office. The afternoon sunlight flooded the glass-and-chrome desk resting atop the plush carpeting. A bank of computers lined one entire wall. Another wall was covered with the rich leather bindings of a half-million-dollar collection of rare books. The office reflected just the right balance of power and elegance.

  He smiled. "Oh, you have no idea, my friends, where I'm going to go next. No idea whatever."

  Looking back, he realized that his success had been inevitable, with or without his family's fortune. He was a born leader.

  He'd first felt the flush of power when he was six years old and caught the upstairs maid and the chauffeur screwing in the linen closet of his parents' mansion in Southampton. He blackmailed both servants for a hundred dollars apiece.

  At prep school, Quantril became the youngest drug dealer in the history of the academy, a fact uncovered when he got caught by the school authorities. Were it not for a sudden large donation to the school's building fund from the Quantril family, young Miles might have been expelled. As it was, he was subjected to the severest punishment he had ever experienced: He was grounded for three months.