Dangerous Games td-40 Read online

  Winters realized the younger man suddenly sounded much more confident. He glanced over his shoulder and saw, with fright, that Bart Sands's gun hand had stopped shaking.

  Sands recited from memory a new set of coordinates which would take them just slightly off theur present course and Winters was puzzled. He knew the charts for this area of the Pacific by heart.

  "Bart, there's nothing there. What are we doing?"

  "Just do it, Johnny," said Sands. He felt sweat pouring from under his arms, but he was as surprised as Winters to find that his gun hand no longer shook.

  Winters changed the direction of the plane. He knew of no island that corresponded with the location given him by Bart Sands.

  Jack Mullin did.

  He had intentionally chosen the island because it did not appear on any existing commercial charts. And rather than trust to luck to find an accomplice like Bart Sands, he had, through an intermediary, ad-

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  vanced the pilot more gambling money for more losses, and then had made him a proposition that would pay off all his debts and give him a nest egg besides.

  Winters saw the uncharted island at the same time Bart Sands did.

  "Land it there," Sands said. "On that stretch of beach."

  The beach had been smoothed out and almost looked like a runway, Winters realized. Somebody had been there and somebody was expecting them. But who?

  He nosed the plane down, and even though the wheels bit deeper into the wet sand than he expected, rolled it to a smooth stop.

  "Get in the back with them," Sands said, waving his gun toward the Barubans in the back.

  When Winters was seated, Sands warned them all to stay put. Then he opened the door between the cockpit and passenger cabin and climbed out.

  There was a single shot.

  Sammy Wanenko jumped to his feet and Winters, looking at Willem's body still sprawled in the aisle of the cabin, said "Take it easy, fella. We don't know what's out there."

  "It does not matter," Sammy said. "I am not afraid."

  "Maybe we all ought to be," Winters said.

  Wanenko threw him a look of scorn but sat back in Ms seat.

  Bart Sands, Winters knew, was dead. Of that he had no doubt. His payoff had been something less than he had expected, even less than he deserved.

  What now?

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  The shot was a clean one, entering the back of Sands's head and tearing away most of his face as it exited.

  Paid in full, thought Lieutenant Jack Mullin, as he bolstered his .45.

  He walked to the body, which was lying face down on the beach, tipped his hat to it in thanks and then walked to the plane. His four men followed, spread out in a fan shape behind him.

  Mullin used the butt of his .45 to bang on the side of the plane.

  "You lads can come out now," he called. When there was no reply from within, he took a chance and stuck his head in the door.

  He saw three live Barufaans, a dead one, and a white man.

  "Everybody out," he ordered.

  "Who are you?" asked Winters.

  "All in due time, Mr. Winters. Do any of these gentlemen speak English, do you know?"

  Sammy raised Ms head high and said "I speak much English. Best in my country except for Willem."

  "Who the devil is Willem?" asked Mullin.

  Sammy pointed to the dead man. "He is Willem."

  "He was Willem, you mean," Mullin said with a laugh. He waved his .45 at the four survivors and said, "All right, now, all out."

  He backed up and allowed the four men to jump out, one at a time. When Winters saw Sands's body, he closed his eyes and shook his head.

  Poor Bart. And his poor wife and child.

  And poor me, he thought. He looked up at Mullin and said: "Listen, pally, what's the story on this thing, if you don't mind my asking?"

  "Not at all," said Mullin. "We are instigating a coup."

  "On Baruba?" asked Winters. "A coup?"

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  Mullin began laughing. He held the .45 loosely in his hand, but the four blacks had Winters and the Barubans covered with their weapons.

  "Wouldn't that be something?" Mullin asked, still laughing. "Seizing power on Baruba? What the hell would we do with the bloody thing? Turn it into an outhouse?"

  "Well, then, why are we so important?" Winters asked.

  Mullin stopped laughing and his face sobered. He squinted at Winters, as if examining him, then said, "Actually, now that you mention it, you're not really that important."

  Damn. Winters cursed inwardly. He knew what was coming now, and he launched himself at Mullin hoping the Barubans would follow his lead. Mullin laughed again and fired a .45 slug into the top of Winters's skull. Winters collapsed in a heap with his legs tangled across those of the dead Bart Sands. The Barubans hadn't moved.

  "I challenge you," Sammy said suddenly, taking one step toward Mullin. The lieutenant held up his hand to his men so they would not kill the Baruban.

  "What's your name, lad?" Mullin asked.

  "Sammy Wanenko."

  "You're the big mucky-muck athlete?"

  "I arn Baruba's champion."

  "And you want to challenge me?"

  "Yes."

  "To what?"

  "To fight."

  Mullin laughed.

  "All right, Baruba's greatest athlete, we'll fight." He turned toward his men and said, "I can use the exercise. None of you boys have acted up in a while and I might be getting rusty."

  He removed his hat, then motioned to Sammy to step forward. As Sammy neared, Mullin removed his

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  eyeglasses and reached down to put them on his hat. But Wanenko stayed just beyond the range of Mullin's foot, and Mullin stood up again.

  "You free us if I win?" Sammy said.

  Mullin shrugged. "But of course, lad. To the victor belongs the spoils."

  "I do not know what that means, but I fight."

  Sammy put his hands in front of him in a boxing stance and he knew that today he must use his right hand. He could not save it for the Olympic games because it was just as important to him today. Mullin turned his palms toward his face and raised his hands in a karate stance, and when Sammy faked a left jab, then threw an overhand right, Mullin backstepped and delivered a front kick that caught Sammy in the stomach. The blow should have felled him on the spot, but Wanenko's youthful strength pumped adrenalin into his body, and after recoiling slightly from the kick, he charged forward, wrapped his arms around Mullin, and let his weight carry the small Briton to the sand.

  He drew his right arm back to smash in Mullin's face, just as Mullin reached alongside his body and drew the .45 from its holster. Just as Sammy let the punch fly, Mullin put a bullet up under his throat that smashed up into his brain. Sammy's last thought was that he would not win a gold medal for Baruba.

  Mullin pushed the dead body off him and shook his head, angered with himself. The four Africans with him would tell the story of how the young Baru-ban had challenged him and would have won, had it not been for the gun. And then there would be more and more challenges to Mullin's authority. It wouldn't do, and on the spot, Mullin decided that the four Africans would never again return to the camp of Jimbobwu Mkombu. They would be left behind in Moscow somehow.

  He looked at the two remaining Barubans and

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  said, "You boys didn't want to go to the Olympics anyway." Then he stepped back, out of the line of fire, and motioned to his men. Tonny and Tomas were drilled through the head by bullets, even before they knew what was happening. There were no last-minute thoughts of Olympic gold for them. Their minds had gone numb with fear long before.

  They simply died.

  "All right, lads, let's get them undressed before they bleed on your clothes." After his men had changed clothes with the Barubans, he made them hide the bodies in the deep brush that ringed the tropical beach.

  Then he watched as his men very carefully loaded bags of equipme
nt onto the DC-3. They handled the bags of explosives, molded into the shape of athletic equipment, as if they were newborn babes, which was just the way he wanted them handled.

  Those newborn babes will be our love notes to the Americans, he thought. Love notes from Jim Bob Mkombu, delivered by yours truly, Flight Lieutenant Jack Mullin.

  A delivery boy? Is that what I really am? he asked himself, but then put the thought behind him. His day would come, he knew. And not far off either.

  The coded message came to Jimbobwu Mkombu soon after he had finished dividing his dinner, half into his mouth and the other half onto his shirtfront.

  He laughed aloud when he read it. The message was from Mullin and it read: "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton."

  A success. The first phase of the mission had been a success. His assassins were on their way to Moscow.

  Mkombu went to the window and looked over the clearing where a few of his soldiers lounged desultorily.

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  As he knew they would, the press of the world had jumped upon the story of the threat to the American athletes and had accepted totally the fiction that the threats had been made by some unhappy group of whites in South Africa and Rhodesia. That was the first stick in place. The second was the smuggling of his assassins into Moscow, disguised as Baruban athletes. The third and final stick would be the killing of the Americans.

  Nothing the South Africans or the Rhodesians could do would stop the downfall of their regimes after that. And then Jimbobwu Mkombu would be king.

  And Mullin?

  Mkombu told himself that Flight Lieutenant Jack Mullin's usefulness would some come to an end. He knew that Mullin believed he was just using Mkombu to further his own ends.

  In the empty room, Mkombu spoke aloud to himself.

  "Soon, he will find who is user and who is used."

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  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Folcroft estate in Rye, New York, had been built behind thick walls by a millionaire who had no wish to share with the public his passion for young women. It had been used by the United States government during World War II as a training camp for spies, and then had drifted into some kind of vague medical administration headquarters for the government, until one Friday, when all the personnel were told to clear out by 6 P.M. Sunday. Everything would be shipped to their homes, along with their new work assignments.

  At 6:01 P.M. that Sunday, Dr. Harold W. Smith, presented by the president of the United States with an assignment he didn't want, arrived at the rickety old dock behind the main Folcroft building. CURE was born.

  Over the years, the estate was converted by Smith into Folcroft Sanitarium, an expensive rest home for wealthy malingerers, and it pleased Smith inordinately that he made the sanitarium show an annual profit. This was not really necessary because the sanitarium served only as a front for the massive computer network that was used by CURE in the battle against crime.

  Smith's office was in a rear room on the main building's second floor, overlooking the waters of Long Island Sound, which looked bleak, cold, and gray twelve months of the year.

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  Smith was in his office, patiently explaining what CURE had done about the note threatening America's athletes. Remo sat on a hard-backed chair facing Smith, but Chiun walked back and forth across the room, stopping only to drum his ringers impatiently on Smith's desk.

  "I've checked everything," Smith said, "and we just can't tie the terrorist threat to either South Africa or Rhodesia."

  "Or anybody else for that matter," Remo suggested. When Smith nodded, Remo said, "For this, the taxpayers spend how many millions a year?"

  "Not on me," Chiun said quickly, looking up from drumming on the desk. "Everyone knows how little the Master of Sinanju is recompensed for his efforts in this very wealthy country. It is one of the disgraces of my life. Can we go to Russia now?"

  "Just a moment, Master," Smith said. He wondered why Chiun was so anxious to leave. All his enthusiasm for this Moscow mission was making the CURE director suspicious.

  "The early bird catches the worm," Chiun said. He nodded toward Remo. "Or, in this case, the early worm may catch the gold medal. We will return in glorious triumph."

  Smith cleared his throat. "Yes, well, Remo, what I'm saying is that we don't know who's involved."

  "As usual. Come on, Chiun, we're going."

  He stood up and Smith said quickly, "I think it would be best if you kept a low profile in Moscow."

  "That will be difficult with that big white nose," Chiun said.

  "He's telling me not to win anything, Little Father," Remo explained.

  Chiun looked at Smith with an expression that meant he thought Smith should be instantly admitted to an asylum.

  "What?" he exclaimed. "Lose?"

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  Smith shrugged. "How would it look if Remo won on national television?"

  "Glorious," said Chiun. "Unless he was sloppy, but I will train him to make sure that does not happen."

  "Maybe glorious but definitely dangerous," said Smith. "Our secrecy would be in danger. Remo's life in jeopardy. You can understand that, can't you?"

  "Of course, I can understand it," Chiun said. "I am not a child."

  "Good," Smith said. He told Remo, "Remember, we haven't discounted anybody. Not the South Africans or the Rhodesians or anybody else. We'll keep looking. And Chiun?"

  "Yes."

  "Thank you for understanding."

  "You do not thank someone for being intelligent, Emperor," Chiun said. "It is because I am so intelligent that I understand these things and can sympathize with your plight."

  As the two men left his office, Smith began to worry again. Chiun had given up too easily and Smith vowed to be sure to watch the Olympics on television, an instrument he generally disdained.

  Out in the hallway, Chiun said to Remo, "That man becomes more and more of a lunatic every day. Imagine. Losing."

  In the car driving to Kennedy Airport, Remo asked, "What are you smirking about, Chiun?"

  "The Master of Sinanju does not smirk. He smiles in warm appreciation of his own genius."

  "And what has your genius come up with now?"

  "I have a plan that will make me a star without that lunatic Smith being able to blame us."

  "I'll let make-you-a-star pass and just ask what it is you expect me to do," Remo said.

  Chiun rubbed his dry, long-nailed hands together in unrestrained enjoyment. "We will physically dis-

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  able all the other American athletes. Not seriously. I know how squeamish you are about these things. Just enough so that they can't compete. Then you will enter all the events and win all the gold medals and you will tell the world you owe it all to me, your trainer, and then I will do endorsements on television and get rich."

  "Brilliant," Remo said.

  "Of course," said Chiun.

  "Except for one thing."

  "Name that thing," Chiun demanded.

  "I won't do it."

  "I beg your pardon." Chiun's voice was outrage itself.

  "Smitty'd never buy all our athletes getting sick or hurt in an accident. Not all of them."

  Chiun frowned. "Hmmmm," he said. "Maybe half of them,"

  "None of them," Remo said. "It'd be too suspicious. Smith'd see through it right away and if he even suspected that you had anything to do with anything that messed up our Olympic team, it could mean the end of that lovely submarine of gold that arrives in Sinanju every November."

  "There are rare occasions, white thing, when you almost make sense. We will think of something else."

  Chiun sank back into the passenger's seat in silence. His next idea was not long in coming and it was even better, but he decided not to tell it to Remo, who had that hangdog loser mentality of Americans, always finding reasons why things couldn't be done.

  His new idea would be to disable not just the American athletes but all the athletes of the world. Remo would be th
e winner by default.

  Chiun liked this plan even better.

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  CHAPTER NINE

  This was the new Russia. Receding into the mists of history were the bloody millions-dead purges of a Stalin and the random cruelties of a Khrushchev. The bloodshed aimed at its own people had largely stopped. But the successors of Stalin and Khrushchev were still paranoidal xenophobes and a call to the Kremlin was still an occasion for sweaty palms on the part of most Russians.

  For one thing never changed, new Russia or old Russia. Some of the people called to the Kremlin never came back.

  But when the call came for Dimitri Sorkofsky, a colonel in the KGB, Russia's secret police, he merely wondered why it had taken them so long to call.

  Sorkofsky was a prideful man, proud of his service record, as he was proud of his two small daughters, Nina, eleven, and Marta, seven. He had been equally proud of their mother, his beautiful Natasha, until she had died five years earlier at the age of thirty-two.

  As he walked through the Moscow streets toward his appointment, Sorkofsky knew he was going to be given the greatest assignment of his career, and his sole regret was that Natasha was not there to share it with him.

  Natasha had been fifteen years younger than he and she had always been so filled with life that she had kept him young. He never knew what had made

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  her fall in love with an ugly old bear of a man like him, but he was only happy that she had. Happy and proud. He recalled how his chest puffed with pride anytime he went anywhere with Natasha on his arm, anytime he saw other men's eyes follow her across a room. And then she was told she had incurable bone cancer.

  Still, during those last six months, she had been the strong one and after she had died, he felt guilty that somehow she had made those six months the happiest of his life when, by all rights, they should have been the saddest. But she would not hear of sad. She had nothing to be sad about, she had told Dimitri. She had raised two lovely daughters and had a lovely, lovely man for a husband.

  He paused on the street and rubbed a hand over the lumps that seemed to have piled up to form his face. How could she have felt that way about him? He touched his eyes with his hand, found moisture, and wiped it away.