Death Check

by Warren Murphy

  And then one day he would lift a car off a person, or settle a dispute in a bar and do it just a mite too well, and CURE would find him. And that would be that, because by then there would be another just like him and if that person came delivering the mail or the milk, Remo would be dead. If a thinking man wants to get you badly enough, he will get you. How few people realized their vulnerability… well, why should they? No one was after them.

  And so the pictures were now liquid and Remo Williams pulled the plug and let them go down the drain where they would wash into sewers and then rivers, and then never be seen again. Lucky fucking pictures.

  Remo read the transcript. “A conversation between A and B two years ago. B is another agency, same team. A is the head of XXX.”

  Even in a water seal envelope, CURE took precautions to break links.

  “A) What we’re doing is taking traditional parts to make a new sum. An interdisciplinary approach to an old situation, the dynamics of conflict.

  “B) You’re trying to find out why people have conflicts with other people, correct?

  “A) In a way, perhaps. You see, man as an animal has conquered the world. Conquered other animals. With ease, as a matter of fact, even though today individual man isn’t sure of it. With that out of the way, man has turned to the only challenge left. Conquering other men. The history of war shows that. Well, why should some men conquer and some be conquered? What are the dynamics of that? That’s our problem. If you knew, you could defeat any army in the world today with a smaller army. You might say a simple little plan to conquer the world, which I’m sure some politician or militarist would just delight in. But you see the plan is really irrelevant, because conquest is meaningless until you define conqueror and conquered.

  “B) You have a plan to conquer the world?

  “A) Oh gracious, don’t tell me you’re one of those. If someone told you he unlocked the atom, would you run out right away to try to use it in a light bulb or a bomb?

  “B) This little plan to conquer the world? Have you achieved it?

  “A) What difference does it make? It’s only a minor byproduct of our basic work here at XXX.

  “B) Would you explain that minor function?

  “A) No, not now. Only when we’re ready, and then as part of the full corpus of our work. Otherwise, you can imagine the sort of people we’d have running around here. I’d close the forum first.”

  End of Transcript.

  Remo filled the basin with water again and let the transcript go the way of the pictures, first to whiteness, then particles, then dissolve.

  That answered one of the why’s. A was Nils Brewster, head of the Brewster Forum which had its hands on “a little plan to conquer the world.” Brewster would stop everything if he thought the military or the government was moving in. That explained why the forum had been a CURE function. Probably because better than any other group in the world, CURE could watch something or someone without anyone knowing — neither those under surveillance nor those doing the surveillance.

  And then the photographs turned up. And that indicated that some other force was involved somehow. Moving in. And the United States could not allow this little plan to conquer the world to go to someone else. And therefore everyone involved, everyone who might know, must die — if it proved necessary.

  Remo pulled the plug in the sink and the milky water disappeared. Maybe a sports store in Des Moines, thought Remo, or a bar in Troy, Ohio. That woman in the cab would give him a recommendation. The bar would be nice. Until a customer put a bullet in his head, then took money from the cash register to make it seem like a robbery.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  REMO DIDN'T BELIEVE IT.

  He had driven past a sign that read “Brewster Forum,” into a lovely little village, then through the village, then past a blank sign which he read in his rear-view mirror as “Brewster Forum.”

  He turned around on a gravel road and drove the rented car back. Plush little homes, some with sweeping green lawns, others hidden by shrubs, manicured sidewalks and roads, tennis courts, a golf course with only one foursome and a circle of small, quaint cottages.

  The August sun blessed the rolling Virginia terrain. A man in blue Bermuda shorts and an old gray shirt pedaled slowly along the asphalt, puffing a pipe rhythmically. He was a small, thin man, with a kind and thoughtful face which Remo recognized in a flash. The man with the giraffe. Remo braked the car.

  “Sir,” he called out to Dr. Abram Schulter.

  The man on the bicycle seemed startled and stopped, almost capsizing himself. He was the only other person on the street. He looked at Remo, then pointed to himself.

  “Me?” asked the foremost neurosurgeon in the world.

  “Yes,” said Remo. “I’m looking for Brewster Forum.”

  “Ah, yes. Of course. Why else would you be here? Yes. Natural. Very natural.”

  “Is this Brewster Forum?”

  “Yes. Did you miss the signs?”

  “No.”

  “Then what would lead you to believe this is not Brewster Forum?”

  “Well, I expected some fences or something.”

  “Whatever for?”

  Remo could not answer that question. What was he to say? Because you’re doing something so top secret that you are going to die before your country will let your work go to anyone else?”

  Not even a fence. What was probably the highest priority secret project in the nation and not even a fence.

  “Well, to keep people out,” Remo answered.

  “Out of what?” pleasantly asked the son of a bitch who liked to screw toy giraffes.

  “Out of this place,” said Remo, barely pleasant.

  “Why would we want to keep anyone out?”

  “I don’t know,” Remo had to say.

  “Then why should we have a fence?”

  Remo had to shrug.

  “That’s an interesting question you asked, son,” said Doctor Schulter. “Why does man continuously seek to set boundaries? Is it to keep people out or just to identify who should be kept out?”

  In a vein of nastiness which Remo knew he should not allow himself, he snarled, “The latter, of course. It’s obvious to anyone who plants tomatoes.” And he drove off, leaving the man to puzzle, with the pipe now working furiously in his mouth.

  Remo drove back to the cluster of cottages, parking near a fieldstone walk that led to a larger white building with green shutters, shaded by large oaks. The newness of the buildings indicated they had been built for proximity to the towering trees.

  Remo followed the fieldstones to the door of the building and knocked. He could see a gravel driveway fifty yards away that led into the circle of cottages but he preferred the walk, a luxury he allowed himself only rarely. Just doing something because he felt like it. Almost like a human being.

  The brass knocker was made in a peace symbol design, a circle with the outline of a phantom bomber inside it. At least that was what it had always looked like to the man who was now Remo Pelham, sent to replace Peter McCarthy.

  The door opened and down around the doorknob was a little girl with pigtails, round pink cheeks, a smile and dancing eyes.

  “Hello,” she said. “My name is Stephanie Brewster. I’m six years old and the daughter of Dr. Nils Brewster who is obviously my father since I am his daughter.”

  “Obviously,” said Remo. “I’m Remo Pelham, I’m thirty-two years old and I am your new policeman for Brewster Forum. I’m taking the place of the man who went away.”

  “You mean you’re our new security officer. To replace Mr. McCarthy who OD’d last week?”

  “OD’d?”

  “Yes. He took an overdose of heroin. Would you call that a drug problem? I mean if one man takes an overdose and dies, does that constitute a problem? Obviously, it is no problem for him.”

  Remo looked more closely. Okay, she wasn’t a midget. Maybe there was a speaker planted on her.

  Stephanie Brewster smiled mis
chievously. “You’re shocked because I’ve added a new dimension to reality. Six-year-old girls are not supposed to be so aware. But I’m very aware. Prematurely aware, they say, and I’m going to face problems because of it when I grow up unless I learn to adjust to my own peer group. That’s what daddy says. Only my older sister, Ardath, who is fifteen years old, is just as aware, and she adjusted. So therefore, I should adjust. Right?”

  “I guess so,” said Remo.

  “Would you like to see my daddy?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “I’ll show you where he is if you play Frisbee with me first.”

  “Why don’t you show me where your daddy is now and then we’ll play Frisbee?”

  “Because if we play Frisbee first, then we’ll play Frisbee for sure. But if it’s later, then maybe we’ll play Frisbee. Reality is so much more meaningful than a promise, don’t you think? Especially a promise from someone over eight.”

  “I never trusted anyone over eight myself,” Remo said. When you are overwhelmed, you are overwhelmed.

  “Do you have a Frisbee?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “But you said you would play Frisbee with me and if you don’t have a Frisbee, how can we play Frisbee together?” Her faint brows furrowed and her mouth turned down. Her blue eyes filled with tears. She stamped a foot. “You said you’d play Frisbee with me and you’re not playing Frisbee. You said you’d play and you don’t have a Frisbee. And how can we play Frisbee if you don’t have one? I don’t have a Frisbee.”

  Then Stephanie Brewster covered her eyes and cried like the six-year-old girl she was. And Remo picked her up and held her and promised her a Frisbee, but she would have to stop rubbing her eyes because that was bad for them.

  “I know,” sobbed Stephanie Brewster. “The retina is sensitive to pressure.”

  “Would you like to learn a Korean proverb?”

  “What?” asked Stephanie cautiously, clinging to her unhappiness lest the offering fail to match in value the tears she was shedding.

  “You should rub your eyes only with your elbows.”

  “But you can’t rub your eyes with your elbows.”

  Remo smiled. And Stephanie laughed. “I see. I see. You’re not supposed to rub your eyes.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I like you. Come, take me into the office.”

  Remo walked into an office off the living room. And he was horrified to learn that this was where Nils Brewster did most of his work, that the papers scattered about were the thinking of Brewster Forum, and no doubt contained that little plan for world conquest. No gates, no locks, and a six-year-old girl who said, “I don’t understand that yet, but you can read it. But leave the papers in the same order. Daddy’s fussy.”

  Leave them in the same order. Her father might die for those papers because he was fussy and left them in the same order. Remo felt sick.

  But he forced himself to think of millions of people and their lives. He stretched thousands out on roads, smiling, holding hands, every home in America, every family, every crowd. And he knew that if the word came, he would do his duty and kill — even if it was the glorious, brilliant Nils Brewster, and even though his death would shatter this delicious child, Stephanie.

  It was Remo’s good fortune that he soon met Nils Brewster, and the meeting made his possible assignment a great deal easier.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NILS BREWSTER WAS NOT DRESSED IN in chains as he had been for his nude portrait. He wore a short-sleeved blue shirt, chinos and sneakers. His hair flew about his head like tornado-whipped tumbleweed.

  Stephanie had gone off to tell her mother about the new director of security, and had left Remo in the only large building in the compound that might have housed a laboratory. It did not. It was an auditorium, now filled with people crowded around tables.

  The first thing Doctor Brewster said to Remo was:

  “Shhhhh.”

  “I’m Remo Pelham, the new . . .”

  “I know, I know. Shhhhhh.”

  He turned and Remo followed. It was a chess tournament. Remo would learn later that Brewster Forum had not only a chess tournament, but a chess instructor, a tennis pro, a golf pro, a singing teacher, a karate instructor, a musical conductor, its own little newspaper — published for the twenty-three people who could understand what was going on in the forum, including to Remo’s awesome shock, a Russian — and a sky-diving coach.

  “We provide what people need or ask for,” Brewster told him later.

  “No skiing?”

  “The weather’s not right here. We send our people who want to learn to the Big Boulder Ski School at Lake Harmony. They teach natur teknik, the best method of learning. You learn parallel right away.”

  “That’s nice,” Remo would say, wondering for just a moment if Nils Brewster had not devised the most beautiful hustle of the Twentieth Century.

  But that afternoon, it was chess. A pudgy man with bulging brown eyes and flicking wrists was in an endgame with a hulk of a white-haired man who hovered over the board like a weightlifter preparing himself for a record hoist. The pudge was Dr. James Ratchett, the homosexual in the cape, versus the Jesuit of the missionary position.

  Ratchett spied Remo and pointed a delicate finger. “Who is that?” he asked. It was an obvious ploy to divert Father Boyle’s attention away from the board because, on the two-buttoned clock, it was Father Boyle’s time running out.

  “The new security director,” whispered Brewster.

  “Our new flatfoot,” taunted Ratchett.

  “Shhhhh,” said Brewster to Remo before Remo said anything.

  “Are you Irish like our deceased Mister McCarthy?”

  Remo said nothing. He just stared at the board.

  Remo had been taught chess and did not like it. He had been taught chess, not for the intricacy of the moves nor for the concentration it required. He was taught chess simply to realize that each move changed the board. It was something people tended to forget in life; that every move altered things in some way and that preconceived operations needed flexibility to be worthwhile. Basically, chess taught Remo how to look. He looked now around the room and saw the karate lover, in clothes this time, watching closely. Another interested observer was a man in a dark suit and dark tie, who Remo found out later was the chess instructor.

  “I asked you a question, cop,” said Ratchett. “Are you Irish like our deceased Mister McCarthy?”

  “Shhhhh,” said Brewster angrily to Remo who was silent.

  “When I speak to you, you will answer me,” said Ratchett, huffing himself in his chair. “Answer me.”

  “I don’t think I’m Irish,” Remo said. It was a bland tone, one used for getting rid of annoying questions and questioners.

  “You don’t think you’re Irish. You don’t think. Don’t you know? After all, I thought all Irishmen knew they were Irish. Otherwise, why would the little dears all become policemen and priests? I’m playing against a priest, now, you know.”

  Father Boyle did not look up, but moved his rook from an inactive corner to the center of the board. Ordinarily, it would not be a bad move. But now it was a bad move because Ratchett had more men attacking the square than the priest had defending. Under those circumstances, the priest would succumb.

  Ratchett was suddenly quiet and on the board with all his attention. Father Boyle looked over his shoulder and extended his hand to Remo. “Hi, I’m Bob Boyle. We’re all a little bit nuts here. I think it’s a function of intelligence.”

  “I’m Remo Pelham,” said Remo, taking the hand. Well, pleasant or not, the priest would go with the rest if the word came down. Remo wasn’t a judge, just an operative.

  “Shhhh,” said Nils Brewster.

  “Get off it, Nils,” said the priest.

  “He’s not to disturb anyone,” Brewster snapped back. “I don’t really like his presence here in the first place. If we didn’t need federal funding, I wouldn’t all
ow him on the premises. You know how they are, the whole fascistic mentality.”

  “You’re the biggest fascist I’ve ever met, Nils. And also the worst snob. Now get off it.”

  Ratchett, red-faced, snapped a piece angrily down on the board, putting more pressure on the imperilled square.

  “What is going on here?” he screamed. “Why must I suffer these indignities from a cop? Every time I move, someone’s yelling. Yelling. Yelling,” Ratchett’s voice rose like a happy hawk. His hands twittered violently. His fat face flushed.

  “You Irish bastards are in league to defeat me. That’s why you’re here. It’s a plot — that’s all you Irish are good for. Why don’t you stop skulking around trying to upset me and act like a man? Tell Boyle how to move. Go ahead. Go ahead. Make your perfidy complete. Go ahead.

  “Look everyone. A cop is going to help Father Boyle play chess. A cop who plays chess.” Ratchett laughed out a haughty condemnation and looked around for approval. Finding none in the onlooking faces, he increased his vehemence.

  “I demand you tell Father Boyle how to win. He can use your help. Anyone who believes in God can use all the help he can get. Go ahead. Right now. No protest. There are two possible ways he can win. I am assuming you know chess. Father Boyle does not. Tell him how.”

  It was the three months of peak that got to Remo, the three months of staying where he should not have stayed mentally or physically. That and Brewster Forum and these lunatics and being told that he must arrange for the deaths of these harmless twits, just because their brilliance might lead them to a wrong corridor.

  So Remo made a mistake. Even before he knew what he was doing, he said:

  “There are three ways Father Boyle can beat you. The first two require an error on your part. But the third he can do alone. His knight to your Rook 3, uncovering check by the queen. It’s a smothered mate in three.”

  Remo had spoken softly, almost like the tender point of a sermon. At first Ratchett was going to laugh, then his face became blank. It was obvious he had not seen the move. And as the move became apparent to others in the audience there were little sounds. And Father Boyle began to laugh, a full hearty laugh, and others laughed with him, and Ratchett became white. White hot. If man could become hate, Dr. James Ratchett was hate.