Murder Ward Page 3

  As a Master of Sinanju, Chiun had been trained through centuries of heritage to work for any emperor who would pay the bills of the village of Sinanju. But Remo was not the Master of Sinanju. He had been a simple Newark policeman who was executed publicly and then woke up privately to find himself in a new life. He was to be the killer arm for an organization that did not exist, to help protect a social contract that did not work.

  It was not supposed to be a long tour of duty. The organization had been set up for a just a brief, trying time in the nation’s history, that period when the country could not survive within the Constitution. The organization was called CURE. But the fight against crime had proved almost unwinnable, and now, ten years later, the secret organization still functioned, its activities known to only two persons: Smith, its director, and Remo, its killer arm. Only those two and whoever happened to be President at the time.

  Remo had once asked Smith what would happen if the President decided to stay in office forever, using the organization CURE to cement his power.

  “We wouldn’t let him,” Smith had said.

  “What would happen if he decided to expose us? The very admission that we exist would imply the Constitution doesn’t work. It’d be chaos.”

  “The President would appear insane, but because since we don’t exist in the first place, we’d be very easy to disband. You’re already a dead man, I would remove myself from existence, and no one else knows what we do.” Smith said this, but he often wondered himself, and asked Remo if Chiun knew what CURE did.

  “Are you still sending the gold to Sinanju on time?” asked Remo.

  “Yes.”

  “Then Chiun couldn’t care less what we do.”

  “That sounds like an answer he would give me,” Smith complained.

  “What I am saying is that if I told him this was a secret agency to protect the Constitution, he would understand that. If I told him that thousands worked for us without knowing who they worked for, he would understand that. If I told him about the computers at our Folcroft headquarters and how you use them to bribe, extort, pressure and destroy enemies of our Constitution, he could understand that But there’s one thing he could never understand.”

  “What’s that?” Smith had asked timorously.

  “The Constitution.”

  Smith had smiled and then, because he was a thorough man, he had personally explained to the Master of Sinanju about the Constitution of the United States.

  Ever since then, Chiun was sure how the United States worked. There was a piece of paper which was a social contract, to which everyone voiced approval and allegiance and to which no one paid any attention. “It’s like your Bible. Pretty songs,” Chiun had said; Remo realized that Chiun, in not knowing as others knew, actually did know far, far better.

  Now Remo sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the latest assignment which was, as Smith said, only urgent in timing. Whatever the hell that meant.

  “We’re losing some people within a general point of focus.” Smith said.

  Remo snapped his fingers. “Of course. Now I’ve got it.”

  Smith gave him that “I shall suffer fools gladly” look.

  “Now this is where it gets somewhat complicated. In one area of focus, an IRS contingent, we’ve lost seven men over the last year and a half.”

  “Why don’t you wait until it’s five thousand, Smitty, and then you’ll have a sure pattern? I mean, why start getting nervous at seven? Where the hell were we at three?”

  “Ah, this is where it gets subtle. We’re not sure it’s seven. We’re not sure actually what is happening. Four deaths were, to all appearances, acts of God.”

  “We can take on God. No trouble,” said Remo. “Just find Him for me. Chiun thinks that God doesn’t balance well and may leave Himself open even if He is Korean.”

  “Will you please? We do know that five of the seven, if there were seven, had had attempts made on their lives and that these attempts were unsuccessful, thanks to police efforts. But one died anyway of kidney failure, two of cerebral hemorrhage, one cardiac arrest…”

  “C’mon, c’mon, get to the point.”

  “Well, we’ve just lost this man Boulder who was doing important IRS work. Heart failure during surgery. According to the doctors the appendectomy was a success; the patient died. There’s another man in his line of work that we’d like to keep alive and we think we might have trouble doing that.”

  “Sure,” Remo said. “I’ll do it. Easy. I’ll make sure he keeps a low cholesterol count and exercises regularly. Then I’ll reinforce his heart and lungs.”

  “That’s not the point. I just want to make sure that a building doesn’t fall on him or a car doesn’t hit him.”

  “And what happens if he has a heart attack?”

  “We’re not sure about those acts of God I mentioned. We want you to find out. We want you to keep this man alive. We want you to protect him from forces known and unknown. You will make sure over a period—let’s say a month—that nothing happens to him. If someone does attempt something, stop it, perhaps run it to its source, pack your bags and go back to your rest. Clear?”

  “As it’s going to be. Clear as it’s going to be. If it gets any clearer to me, I’ll need a seeing-eye dog to find it.”

  “You know, Remo, as you grow older I understand you less and less.”

  “I was about to say that of you, Smitty.”

  “I haven’t changed since I was fifteen, Remo.”

  “I believe that,” said Remo, and then got the fix on the man he was supposed to protect. His name was Nathan David Wilberforce and he lived in Scranton. With his mother. He didn’t like loud noises.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THERE WERE THREE EXCELLENT reasons why the treasury agents should leave the Wilberforce household immediately. Mrs. Wilberforce said she would make them perfectly clear, if the agents would sit down—no, not on the couch, couldn’t they see it had a dust cover on it, no, not on the hideabed, that was for company—well, then, if they must, stand.

  “You have come into my house, bringing filth from the streets, putting your hats wherever they fall and using vile and obscene terms in front of Nathan David. You stressed there were dangers to Nathan David and you were protecting him. But who will protect Nathan David from dirt, untidiness and obscenity? Certainly not you three,” said Mrs. Wilberforce in righteous indignation, her massive breastworks rising under the flopping brown bouclé dress like unscalable fortifications. She stood six-foot-one and weighed, according to the agents’ best guesses, a healthy two hundred and forty pounds. That she had not played defensive tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers, said one of the agents outside her hearing, was that she probably didn’t like the untidiness of the locker rooms.

  “Ma’am, your son is an assistant director of the IRS. He is a very important person and we have reason to believe his life may be in danger.”

  “I know he’s in danger. From riff-raff.”

  “We discovered someone working on the front of Assistant Director Wilberforce’s car last month. He was not installing a new muffler, ma’am, if I may be blunt. He was working on the brakes.”

  “You don’t know what he was installing. You didn’t catch him.”

  “We stopped him, ma’am.”

  “Good for you. Nathan David will take buses from here on in. If that will make you happy?”

  “Not exactly, ma’am. We just want to be sure. We have our orders to function as sort of a screen for Assistant Director Wilberforce. He is working on very, very sensitive projects, and we would appreciate your cooperation. It’s for his own good.”

  “I will decide what is good for Nathan David.”

  “We have our orders, ma’am.”

  But when the agents checked with the office that afternoon, they found that their orders were changed, and they assumed that Mrs. Wilberforce, of 832 Vandalia Avenue, had some form of influence. They were yanked from the case immediately.

  “Don’t
ask me,” said their supervisor. “The change came from higher up. I can’t explain it.”

  When the three agents said goodbye to Assistant Director Wilberforce in his office, Wilberforce was interviewing a new employee, a thinnish sort of man with high cheekbones and very thick wrists.

  “We just came in to say goodbye and wish you luck, Mr. Wilberforce.”

  “Oh, thank you. Thank you very much,” said Wilberforce. “Thank you. I’d shake hands, but you’re at the door already.”

  “You never shook hands, Mr. Wilberforce,” said the agent who acted as spokesman.

  “Well, why start now?” said Wilberforce and smiled nervously. He was a neat, plumpish man in his middle forties and his desk was painfully neat, as though the papers had been placed there with surveying instruments.

  When the agents had left, Remo put his feet on the desk.

  “Sir. Uh, sir. That’s my desk,” said Wilberforce.

  “Good. I’ll just sit here and not bother you.”

  “I believe that if you are going to work for me, we should at least come to some sort of understanding. I like things neat.”

  Remo looked at his shoes. They were shined. He looked up to Wilberforce, puzzled.

  “My desk. Your feet are on my desk.”

  “Right,” said Remo.

  “Would you mind taking them off?”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Remo softly.

  “Would you please take them off?”

  “No,” said Remo.

  “Well, then, I insist you take them off. I can get very physical, Mr. Remo. And it would do very little good for your government career if I should be forced to take extreme measures.”

  Remo shrugged and his feet rose a quarter of an inch above the desk while he continued to sit in front of it. Wilberforce was confident this new employee would have to lower his feet to the floor. Even a dancer couldn’t keep them raised like that for more than a minute or two. But as the interview went into its second hour, the feet did not lower and the new employee seemed unstrained. The feet remained there, that quarter-inch above the desk, as if they were nailed in space.

  The new employee had a special function. He was a time-study man. It was his job to find out why Mr. Wilberforce’s unit worked so well and then make this information available to others. He would have to stay fairly close to Mr. Wilberforce to see how he allocated his time and rest, even to the hours he slept.

  Wilberforce asked about Mr. Remo’s background in time study, but got vague answers. He asked about Mr. Remo’s training but got vague answers. He wanted to phone his director and register a complaint about insolence on the job, but he never seemed to be free of this man long enough to make a private phone call.

  As usual, Wilberforce worked late, so that when he left, the outside office was dark. The hallway on the eighth floor of the federal building was dark. Black. The hallway smelled of fresh disinfectant from a recent evening mopping.

  “The elevator is down there to the left,” said Wilberforce.

  “There are usually lights in the hallway, aren’t there?” asked the time-study man.

  “Yes. Don’t be nervous. Just hold on to my han…uh, stay close to the wall and follow my voice.”

  “Why don’t you follow me?” said Remo.

  “But you can’t see the elevator.”

  “Don’t worry. I see more than you.”

  It was then that Wilberforce realized he could not hear the new employee’s breathing. He knew this was strange because he could hear his own so well. He did not even hear the employee’s steps on the marble floor, yet his own sounded like rifle shots in the silent hallway. It was as if the employee had disappeared in the darkness.

  Wilberforce moved toward the elevator and when he went to the other side of the hall to feel for the elevator button, he heard feet moving rapidly. Perhaps two or three men close by, and then he heard what sounded like the puncturing of paper bags, a throat gurgle and one fast flight of birds. Right by his head.

  Then the hall lights came on. Wilberforce gasped and felt his head become light. His new employee was standing beside him holding his arm so he would not faint. Wilberforce had seen it.

  The elevator door had been open. And there was no elevator. He was standing before an open shaft. There were eight floors of nothing before him.

  “My god. Someone could have fallen in. What carelessness. What carelessness,” gasped Wilberforce.

  “Someone did,” said his new employee and held him while he leaned over the edge for a look.

  Down below in the darkness, Wilberforce made out a broken body impaled on the springs and perhaps two others. He could see only arms and legs way down there, and then he saw something floating down toward the bodies. It was his late afternoon snack.

  Remo helped Wilberforce to the stairs, and they walked down the eight flights. At each landing, Wilberforce gathered a bit more of his horrified senses. By the ground floor, he was complaining about the lack of proper maintenance in federal buildings. His mind had done what Remo had heard Chiun say untrained minds did. When confronted by an unacceptable fact, it would rearrange it to make it acceptable or it would ignore it.

  Standing in the Scranton street with Pennsylvania snow falling, turning from white to gray in the last twenty feet of its descent, Remo saw that Wilberforce had adjusted the attempted assassination into a janitorial problem.

  “I’ll have to send a memo to the building superintendent in the morning,” said Wilberforce, buttoning his gray and orange winter overcoat, the kind of coat Remo knew was destined second-hand for Skid Row, but which he had never seen worn new before.

  Remo wore gray slacks, a light blue shirt, and a gray-blue blazer that flapped in the wind.

  “Where’s your coat?” asked Wilberforce.

  “I don’t have one,” said Remo.

  “You can afford one, can’t you?”

  “Yeah. I don’t need one.”

  “That’s impossible. It’s cold out.”

  “How do you know it’s cold?”

  “The temperature tells me,” said Wilberforce.

  “Well, talk back to it. Tell it it’s wrong.”

  “You can’t do that to temperature. It’s part of nature.”

  “What do you think you are? You’re part of nature.”

  “I am Nathan David Wilberforce and I keep buttoned up,” said Wilberforce. “I see that your mother hasn’t properly trained you.”

  “I never knew my mother. I was raised in an orphanage,” said Remo.

  “I’m sorry,” said Wilberforce. “I can’t imagine what life would be like without a mother.”

  “Pretty good,” said Remo.

  “That’s a horrible thing to say,” said Wilberforce. “I don’t know what I’d do without my mother.”

  “You might do pretty well, Wilberforce.”

  “You’re a horrid human being,” said Wilberforce.

  “If you work at it, you might become one, too,” said Remo. “A human being, that is.”

  “Is your work over for the day or are you going to report on my homelife tonight?”

  “Tonight isn’t so important, but I might as well take a look-see.”

  “You don’t take notes.”

  “In my head,” said Remo. “I take notes in my head.”

  That night would not be dangerous for Wilberforce, Remo knew. It would be probably one of the safer nights for him. In the Western world, as Chiun had taught him, there were only single attacks, never multiple level on a linear time basis. Chiun had explained it in the earliest training using lacquered wooden balls the size of grapes and a large wooden ball about the size and color of a grapefruit.

  “In the West, an assassination is one ball,” said Chiun, holding up a single, small black ball in his bony hands. The ball seemed to rise to the tips of his fingernails as if on a string.

  “The philosophy behind this must come from the mind of a businessman for it is not really designed for effectiveness. It is designed
to use as little energy as possible. Watch.”

  Chiun pointed to the large yellow ball on the table. “That is the target. When it is on the floor, the task is done. For that is what assassination is: a task.”

  “Call it what it really is,” Remo had said. “Killing. Murder. Say it if you’re going to say it. Don’t give me this funny talk about a task.”

  Chiun had nodded patiently. It was only years later, after Remo achieved proficiency and wisdom that had made him into another being, that Chiun would criticize and call him a pale piece of a pig’s ear. In the early training, Chiun appeared to be patient.

  “Pay attention,” Chiun said. “This is the Western technique.”

  Chiun flipped the small black ball at the larger yellow ball. It struck slightly off-center and the larger ball moved slightly toward the edge of the table. Chiun’s hands came to rest on the lap of his golden kimono and exaggeratedly he watched the large ball. Then, with just as much exaggeration, he appeared to ponder, and then flipped another black ball. It missed. He stared at the large yellow ball, appeared to think long and hard, then threw another small black ball. This one hit the larger ball dead center, and slapped it over the edge of the table onto the floor. The smaller ball, spinning wildly with English, rolled almost crazily around the table, but then wound up stopping just before Chiun’s hand.

  “Western technique,” Chiun said. “Now the technique of Sinanju. Get me the yellow ball.”

  Remo picked up the large ball, bending with pain to reach it—for he was in the early phase of his physical training—and put it back on the table.

  Chiun bowed, smiled, reached into his pocket and brought forth a handful of small black balls. He took a few in each hand, and then snaked his two hands in different directions in front of the table, and then, bing, bing, bing, bing, balls shot out from his fingertips as it from two rocket launchers, and one after another, hit the large yellow ball dead center, without pause, and spun it immediately off the edge of the table.

  Chiun put his now empty hands on his lap again.

  “Now do you understand? The Western way of assassination provides moments of readjustment, secure periods, awareness of danger time—all things that you do not wish for the intended target.”