Fool's Gold

by Warren Murphy

  That was part of the mercantile courting dance too. Terri put down the shawl she had been looking at and began to inspect a row of shirts hanging randomly from a pipe rack.

  The scene was being watched by a man in a tan poplin suit. He looked around and saw that he was, in turn, being watched by a street urchin. The young boy was physically small, but he had the wary untrusting eyes of an adult who had lived many years.

  The man in the poplin suit called him over and when the boy dutifully stood in front of him, the man leaned over to whisper in his ear. The boy listened, then nodded brightly. His eyes lit up with pleasure, and the pleasure was redoubled when the man put two dollars into his hand.

  "You are a woman without heart," the merchant said in Spanish.

  Terri answered in English. "Not without brains though," she said. "Enough brains not to pay six dollars for something worth only a fraction of that. Four dollars."

  The merchant sighed. "Five dollars. That is my very last and best price and the memory of those starving children will be on your head, not mine."

  "Sold," Terri said. "But you must promise never to reveal to my friends the outrageous price I paid for this or they will begin to doubt my sanity."

  "I'll wrap it," the merchant said. "Although even the price of the wrapping paper makes this transaction a loss to me."

  He took the shawl to the counter in the center of the store and measured off a piece of paper to wrap it. He seemed intent on making sure he did not use one millimeter more paper than was absolutely necessary.

  Meanwhile, Terri reached in her purse. She was watching the merchant and feeling into her purse with her hand, when suddenly the pocketbook was yanked away from her.

  She shrieked and turned to see a small boy holding the purse, running toward the front of the tent-topped shop.

  She turned to run after him, but then stopped. A big man reached out a big hand and grabbed the little boy's shoulder. The boy stopped as if he had run into a wall. The big man removed the purse from him, then gave him a paternalistic and not unkind rap on the rear end. The boy ran away without looking back.

  The big man in the tan poplin suit looked at Terri and smiled and she felt her heartbeat speed up.

  The man stepped forward and handed her the purse.

  "Yours, I believe." The accent was British.

  Terri just gaped, open-mouthed, for a second, at this quintessential man of her dreams. Then, flustered, she said, "Yes. Thank you."

  She took the purse, nodded to the man, and turned back to the merchant, who was still measuring the wrapping paper.

  "How much are you paying for that shawl?" the Briton asked.

  "Five dollars," Terri said.

  "Very good. A very fair price for a fine piece of work. Congratulations."

  "She stole it from me," the merchant said.

  "I know," the Briton laughed. "And tonight, children will be dying of starvation all over Madrid."

  The merchant looked down to hide his smile.

  It was love at first sight. Terri had never believed in it because it had never happened to her. Until now.

  "Thank you," she mumbled to the man.

  "Spot of tea when you're done here?" the man said.

  Terri nodded dumbly.

  "Well, then, I really should have your name, shouldn't I?" the man said.

  "Errr, Terri. Terri Pomfret," she said.

  "A lovely name for a lovely lady. My name is Neville," said Neville Lord Wissex.

  "Bad news, Little Father," Remo said.

  "You're still here," Chiun said.

  "If you think that's bad, try this," Remo said. "Smitty wants us to go to Hollywood right away. That's where CURE's records wound up. I told him we needed a vacation."

  "Never argue with the emperor," Chiun said. "We will go to Hollywood."

  "Hold on, you're up to something. That was just too agreeable and too fast."

  "We must go where duty call takes us," Chiun said.

  "I got it. You think you can con some producer into making your movie about Sinanju, don't you?"

  "I really don't wish to discuss this with you, Remo. You are of a very suspicious turn of mind and it is not flattering to you at all."

  "I'll fix you. Every producer I see, I'm going to kill on sight," Remo said.

  It was the day she would remember all her life, spent with the man she had wanted to be with all her life.

  Terri Pomfret found herself wishing she had a camera so she could record just the way it had gone. Having tea at a small cafe and then strolling along the riverfront. Spending a long, leisurely, wonderful hour inside a historical chapel, looking at seventeenth-century murals and frescoes.

  And now here she was, following Neville, sweet, kind, handsome, charming, cultured Neville, up the steps toward his hotel room. How like him the hotel was. Not flashy or gaudy or tacky. A quiet, genteel building, in a quiet corner of the city, elegant, old-world charming.

  She put her hand on the small of his back and Wissex stopped on the stairs and looked down into her eyes. His eyes were the brightest blue she had ever seen. Not dark and hard like Remo's but soft and gentle and caring.

  "I've always dreamed of a man like you," she said. He smiled, the smile of one neither embarrassed nor patronizing; the smile of a sharer of the heart's deepest emotions. The smile of a man who understood; who would always understand.

  As soon as they entered his room, Neville locked the door behind them, and then drew her into a clinch.

  She felt his hands around her back, unbuttoning her blouse, as he steered her into the room, toward the bed. The bed seemed to be beckoning her, calling. She felt her heart pound and her breath catch in her throat and she closed her eyes tightly and buried her face in his neck.

  "Oh, take me. Take me," she whispered.

  Neville Lord Wissex smiled, and said, "I intend to."

  And then he pushed her into a large steamer trunk at the foot of his bed, slammed the lid and locked it.

  At first she shouted, then screamed, but the sound was muffled by heavy styrofoam insulation on the inside of the chest.

  Wissex walked to the phone in the room, dialed a number, and said:

  "That package is ready."

  Remo was wondering where Terri was and when a knock came on their hotel room door, he grumbled, "It's about time," and yelled out, "It's open."

  A smartly uniformed bellhop opened the door and stepped inside. To Remo, he said, "Pardon, Señor. There is an old gentleman in this room?"

  Remo was lying on the couch. Without rising, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward where Chiun stood in a corner of the room, looking out the window.

  The bellhop approached the old Korean.

  "Señor?"

  Chiun turned and the bellhop handed forward a small package wrapped in plain brown paper.

  "This was left at the desk. I was told to give it to you," the bellboy said.

  Chiun took it and nodded his thanks. The bellhop lingered a moment, as if expecting a tip, then turned and left. Chiun inspected the package, turning it over in his hands.

  "What is it?" Remo said, raising himself to a half-sitting position.

  "I will not know until I open it," Chiun said.

  "Then open it."

  "Whose package is this?" Chiun asked.

  "Yours, I guess."

  "You guess? You didn't guess when that vicious little creature barged in here and asked for an old man. You pointed to me. Old? Since when am I an old man?"

  "Since you were eighty years old," Remo said.

  "That is old?" Chiun said. "Maybe it is old for a turnip, but for a man, it is not old. Never old."

  "Why are you getting all bent out of shape?" Remo asked.

  "Because I cannot rid your mind of your Western nonsense, no matter how I try," Chiun said. "Are you always going to go through life, thinking people are old, just because they have seen eight full decades?"

  "All right, Chiun, you're young," Remo said. "Open t
he package."

  "No, I am not young," said Chiun.

  "What are you then? Christ, help me. I want to know so I don't offend you again."

  "I am just right," said Chiun.

  "Good," said Remo. "Now we've got that squared away. If we ever get a bellhop asking for the just-right man, I'll know right off it's you."

  "Don't forget," said Chiun.

  "Open the package," Remo pleaded.

  Chiun delicately slit the paper with the long nail of his right index finger. Inside was a small box which he opened and took out a golden object.

  "What is it?" Remo asked. "It looks like the handle of a knife."

  "It is the handle of a knife. It is a challenge. They have the woman."

  Remo got up from the sofa. "Who does?" he asked.

  Chiun tossed the knife handle across the room to Remo. Remo caught it and examined the engravings on it: a lion, a sheaf of wheat, and a dagger.

  "Same crest we saw back at the bullrun," Remo said. "This is them? The House of something or other?"

  "The House of Wissex," Chiun said.

  "You're sure this means they have the girl?" Remo asked. He turned the knife handle over in his hand, as if by inspecting it closely he might find something more there than just a knife handle.

  "Of course they have the woman," Chiun said. "It is the tradition of the challenge. First they take something of value to you, and then they send a knife to challenge you to come and reclaim your property."

  "She's just more trouble than she's worth," Remo said. "Let them have her."

  "It is not that simple," Chiun said.

  "It never is."

  "She is our client and her safety is our responsibility. The House of Sinanju cannot walk away from such a challenge."

  "I knew she was going to be troublesome," Remo said.

  "It is our responsibility, but it is my challenge," Chiun said. "It is from one assassin to another."

  "And what am I, a chicken wing?"

  "No. You are an assassin, but this is a challenge from the Master of Wissex to the Master of Sinanju."

  "Tough luck," Remo said. "We go together."

  Chiun sighed. "You are truly uneducable."

  "Probably, but let's go find the girl," Remo said.

  When the long yacht came within sight of the Hamidian coast, the first faint streaks of sun were smearing the gray sky with pink smudge.

  From a telephone in the main cabin, Neville Lord Wissex called Moombasa and awoke him in bed.

  "I hope this important," Moombasa said thickly.

  "It is. This is Wissex. I have the girl."

  "Good. Where's the gold?"

  "We don't have that yet," said Wissex.

  "Why don't you call me back when you find it?" Moombasa said.

  "Wait," said Wissex. "There's more."

  "What?"

  "Those two men who have been guarding her. I'm sure they will be coming here."

  "Should I leave the country?" Moombasa said worriedly. "I can easily schedule my triumphant tour as national liberator. Cuba and Russia keep inviting me."

  "No," said Wissex. "I'll deal with those two men. I just wanted you to know."

  "Where are you now?" Moombasa asked.

  "Just off the coast."

  "Don't bring the girl here," said Moombasa.

  "Why not?"

  "If you bring her here, those two are liable to follow. I don't want them here unless they're already in pieces."

  "I won't bring her there. I'm taking her to that hill near your border."

  "Mesoro? Why there?"

  "Because it suits my purposes," Wissex said. "It's flat and high and they won't be able to sneak up on me."

  "I'll send the Revolutionary Commando Brigade or whatever they call themselves to help you."

  "Perish forbid," Wissex said. "Just leave it to me. You could help by keeping patrols and army and everybody else out of the area. I don't want my equipment to be hindered by your people marching around."

  "Hokay. I want that woman to talk," Moombasa said.

  "She will."

  "What does she look like?"

  "She's attractive but not your type," Wissex said.

  "Too bad. Keep in touch," Moombasa said.

  Wissex smiled, replacing the phone. Of course she was not Moombasa's type. The woman had an IQ over 70.

  Wissex left the cabin and herded Terri, her hands tightly bound behind her, into the back seat of a helicopter, lashed to a takeoff pad on the small ship's bow.

  "Where are we going?" she asked.

  "To await the arrival of your friends," Wissex said. He smiled at her and she noticed that his blue eyes were cold and unfeeling. The eyes of a killer. She shuddered at his touch as he pushed her roughly into the aircraft.

  From the airport, Remo called Smith again but the CURE director had not been able to find out where the girl had vanished to.

  "What the hell good are those computers of yours, Smitty, when they can't find anything out?"

  "You forget, Remo. I don't have the computers any more. All the records are still missing. That's why I want you to forget that woman and get back here to the States. Get our records back."

  "What about the mountain of gold?" Remo asked. "The death of Western civilization as we know it? What about all that?" Remo asked.

  "You know now there is no mountain of gold. So all this is is a kidnapping. The mountain of gold might have been more important than our records, but that woman professor isn't. Come back."

  "I can't do that," Remo said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because her safety is my responsibility. Because the House of Sinanju can't walk away from a challenge."

  "I don't understand all that tradition business," Smith said.

  "That's because you're uneducable, Smitty. You just hold the fort. We'll get there when we get there," Remo said as he hung up.

  As he walked away from the phone booth, Remo saw the same spy who had been dogging his footsteps earlier through Bombay Airport.

  The short, squat man was now wearing a flamenco dancer's costume. Little puffballs hung from the fringes of his flat-brimmed hat. He stood by the wall next to the phone booth, edging closer to Remo. His satin trousers squeaked as they rubbed against the marble airport wall.

  He smiled at Remo as Remo stepped nearer, the smile one gives a stranger he doesn't really wish to talk to.

  "Where is the girl?" Remo said.

  "Beg pardon, Señor?"

  "The girl."

  "We Flamenco dancers have many girls," the man said.

  "You know the girl I want," Remo said.

  The man shrugged. He was still half shrugged when Remo upended him and dragged him by one fat ankle over to the railing of the observation deck.

  Remo tossed him over. The fat man hung upside down, suspended only by Remo's grip on his ankle.

  "Where have they taken her?" Remo growled.

  "Hamidia," the man screamed in terror. "Hamidia. To Mesoro. True. True. I tell the truth, Señor."

  "I know you do," Remo said. "Have a nice trip."

  He let the man fall and walked away, even before the scream died out with a fat splat. Chiun was standing in front of an arcade filled with electronic games.

  "They've gone to Hamidia. Some place named Mesoro," Remo said.

  Chiun nodded and said, "Japs are treacherous. I bet we could have played Space Invaders on that other one's machine."

  Generalissimo Moombasa didn't like to rise before noon. It was his opinion that in people's democratic republics, anything that happened before noon deserved to wait for the great man to get out of bed.

  But the call from Lord Wissex had disrupted his smooth sleeping pattern and he rested only fitfully for two more hours until his private telephone rang again.

  If this kept up, he was going to have it disconnected, he decided.

  "Hello," he yelled into the phone.

  "Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh. This is Pimsy Wissex," a voice rattled.

&
nbsp; "Sorry, you got wrong number. You want asthma clinic, you look up number. The house of fancy boys is down the street too. You look up their number."

  He hung up the telephone but it rang again instantly.

  "What now?"

  "Listen to me, you bleeding wog," Pimsy snarled. "I've got something to tell you."

  "This better be important."

  "It is," said Uncle Pimsy.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Night was falling. She had hung there through the brutally hot sun of the day with not a drop of water for her lips. Her arms felt that they were going to snap out of her shoulder sockets and twice during the day when she could stand the pain no more, she had screamed and Wissex had lowered her to the ground for fifteen minutes before hoisting her up again.

  Her throat was parched and her lips were dry. She touched them with her tongue but it felt like rubbing wood over wood.

  At least the night would bring some coolness, some relief from the day's heat. But in the grassy fields below that surrounded the flat-topped hill they were on, Terri could hear the insects and then the sounds of larger animals— a snarl, a growl— and the thought of what was out there chilled her.

  She was hanging from a long boom, extended out over the edge of the Mesoro Hill. Ropes tied roughly around her wrists were fastened to the boom, and she was able to rest only by grabbing the boom with her hands and holding on, to rest her wrists, until her hands tired of supporting her weight and she had to let go. And then the pain in the wrists began again.

  The boom was attached at its other end to a heavy, complicated tripod in the center of the flat table of rock. And Lord Wissex sat there, at a table which he had unloaded from the helicopter, a table with controls built into it. During the heat of the day, he had opened a bottle of white wine which he had carried in a cooler, had poured himself a glass, and had toasted Terri Pomfret's beauty.

  But he had offered her none for her dry throat.

  He was a sadist and a brute. She had fallen for the accent and the superficial charm and the tweedy British clothes and she realized that if Jack the Ripper had ben been soft-spoken and full of "yes, m'dears" and worn an ascot, she probably would have crawled into a blood-stained bed with him.