Power Play td-36

by Warren Murphy

  Muckley began to think about the anti-sex sentiment in the country. There might be a way to tap into it. National crusades against smut. Collect money and use some of it to finance legal complaints by some association against smut peddlers, the rest of course to go for administrative costs, which meant Higbe Muckley. Not an association. A church. It would have to be a church for all the tax benefits.

  Forgotten now was Flamma as Muckley began to zero his thoughts in on his first love-cash.

  A new name for a new church. The Divine Right church was okay for what it did but it didn't have the sock that anti-pornography would need.

  The Clean Living church. The Church for Clean Living. He idly fingered a few more pebbles and tossed them into the river. Killyfish first bolted from the splash of each stone, then darted back in after it, searching for food.

  A hundred thousand members at ten dollars a head each year. A million gross. He could get all the work done for less than a quarter of that. The rest to go to Higbe Muckley.

  He wished that he had learned to read and write when he was a child. He was okay doing numbers, but if he had been able to write, he could have saved all those legal fees for the Church of Clean Living. He could write the anti-porn briefs himself.

  He tossed more pebbles into the stream and wondered if there was a way to increase the net of the Church of Clean Living from seventy-five percent of the gross to something higher. Maybe he could hire cheaper lawyers.

  The secretary in Muckley's office had seemed glad to tell him where he could find the preacher. She seemed angry at Muckley, almost hoping that Remo could bring some kind of irritation to his day. She took a deep breath and gave Remo her address too, so he could come around that night and tell her all about his meeting with Higbe Muckley.

  Remo promised to and then he was out in the woods leading toward the Wanamaker River, moving silently, not because he tried to, but because it was the only way he knew how to move. Years of training, running along wet strips of soft tissue, spinning, leaping and jumping on the paper with the goal being not to tear it or even wrinkle it had made the soft, slow movement of the langorous cat the only way he moved now.

  Someone else was moving toward Higbe Muckley, but Muckley heard nothing except the kerplunking of the small stones he tossed into the river. If Flamma had belly-danced up behind him now, finger-rings clicking and a balalaika plinking away, he might not have heard, because he was concentrating only on money.

  So he did not hear the step behind him. He did not hear the whir as a knife made one lazy half-turn on its way to meet his back. He felt it only when the blade pierced his spinal column and then there was no longer anything to feel with so he fell face forward, his head between his feet, arms extended in front of him, like a man doing calisthenics and trying to touch his toes.

  Remo had heard the whir of the knife. He had stopped. He heard the small sip of a groan from Muckley, and sensing what it was, he growled and ran ahead through the trees.

  The assassin heard the growl behind him. He wanted to recover his knife. But his first choice was always to be careful and he sank back into the trees, moving quickly and quietly away from the place he had heard the sound of a man's angry snarl.

  Remo saw Muckley at the edge of the river and saw the knife protruding from his back. He did not have to look to see if the man was dead. Remo knew from the location of the wound and the sprawl of the body that Higbe Muckley had taken his last tax deduction.

  An anger welled up in him and he wheeled about to face the heavy forest. The blood of his adopted Korean ancestors surged in him and he called out:

  "Wa, do you hear my voice?"

  The assassin stopped short when he heard his name called, but he did not answer. He listened.

  "There is no running from me, Wa," Remo called. "I am going to feed you your own knives."

  The assassin wondered who was calling. And how did he know Wa?

  "You speak bravely," he called back. Then, to give the other men no chance to fix the sound, he instantly began to move away, parallel to the river.

  Remo started slowly toward the spot in the trees where the sound had come from.

  "Brave?" he called out. "What do you know of brave, you worthless chip of carrion who kills only those with their backs to you?"

  The assassin stopped. For a moment, he considered going back after this insolent white, but he had other things to do. He called out again.

  "You will pay for that, white man. You will pay dearly for your insolence. I only regret I cannot extract that payment right now."

  Again he moved away from the sound of his own voice.

  Remo recognized that the voice had moved from the first time it had sounded and realized what the assassin was doing. There was no point in following him.

  "You extract nothing," Remo taunted. "Your people were always cowards and traitors, attacking at night from behind, turning like rats on the only man ever to take pity on them."

  The assassin stopped again.

  "Pity?" he called. "The Wa need no pity."

  "My ancestor, the Master of Sinanju, took pity on you centuries ago," Remo called. "As he did, so I will not. When we meet, Wa, you die."

  A chill ran down the assassin's body when he heard "Master of Sinanju." Surely that had been nothing more than a family legend. But why would this... this white man know of it?

  "Who are you?" he called.

  "I am a Master of Sinanju, peanut," Remo called. And he forced his anger inward, until his rage had spent, and then slowly pronounced the words he had spoken so often before.

  "I am created Shiva, the Destroyer; death, the shatterer of worlds; the dead night tiger made whole by the Master of Sinanju. Flee, dog meat, for when we meet, there will be no flight for you."

  The assassin paused. Remo was not moving. His voice still came from the same spot.

  Pride in his art and in his tradition and family almost forced him to return, to cut down this prideful white man with the overactive imagination. A Master of Sinanju indeed? The Wa would teach him of Masters of Sinanju.

  "When we meet again," the assassin call, "I will have time for you. It will be my pleasure."

  He turned and moved softly away through the woods, and behind him he heard Remo's laugh echoing over the wide river.

  And in that prideful laugh, welling out of his throat like the pulsing of the blood in his veins, Remo felt at one and at peace with his ancestors, that generation after generation of assassins who had refined the magic of Sinanju and handed it down through the ages as their legacy to him.

  He turned and looked back at Muckley's body.

  "That's the biz, sweetheart," he said coldly. "But don't worry. When I meet him, I'm canceling his return ticket."

  As soon as Remo entered the room, Chiun knew.

  "You have met the Wa," he said.

  Remo nodded.

  "He got away," Remo said. "He left his calling card."

  Remo held the red-leather handled knife toward Chiun, just as Theodosia burst into the room.

  "I just heard on the television," she said. "Muckley's dead. Knifed."

  She saw the knife in Remo's hand and uttered a muffled "oooh."

  Her eyes fixed on him, all questions, which Remo did not answer.

  Chiun took the knife and looked at the engraved horse on the Hade.

  "You said you were just going to talk to him," Theodosia told Remo accusingly.

  "Easy," he said. "I didn't kill him."

  "On television, they're blaming Wesley and his people. That means you. Us. All of us."

  "They can blame who they want," Remo said. "He was dead when I got there."

  Theodosia nodded, but it was not a convincing statement of agreement.

  Before either could speak, the telephone rang and from the first syllable, Remo recognized the annoyed voice of Harold W. Smith.

  "I didn't do it," he said.

  Remo listened a while, then said, "Well keep him alive." He hung up, without any
pretense of a cordial goodbye.

  "Who was that?" Theodosia asked.

  "My junior high school gym teacher," Remo said. "He promised to check with me from time to time to see if I was making a success out of my life."

  Chiun was carefully examining the knife. Rachmed ran into the room.

  "I Just heard," he said to Theodosia. "Missss, I do not mind telling you that I do not like all this killing and violenccccce."

  "No," Remo said. "I guess pickpocketing is as violent as you like to get."

  Rachmed glared at him. "It was all a mistake, sssir," he said. His face flushed.

  "And the whorehouse for little girls? Is that a missssssstake, too?"

  Baya Bam ran from the room. Theodosia looked at Remo with suspicion in her eyes. "Just who the hell are you?" she said.

  "Your friendly neighborhood bodyguard," Remo said. Chiun put down the knife. Remo said, "Pruiss is all right?"

  Chiun nodded toward the wall separating his room from Pruiss's.

  "You can hear him breathing, can you not?"

  Remo listened and caught the sound of Pruiss's breath. He nodded. Theodosia strained to hear but could hear nothing.

  "If it wasn't you, who was it?" she asked Remo. She paused, then answered her own question to her own total satisfaction. 'Those oil people. Bobbin," she said. She swore.

  She wheeled. Remo and Chiun heard her entering Pruiss's room.

  Chiun looked at Remo.

  "The game is almost played out, my son," he said.

  Remo nodded.

  "Be careful," Chiun said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  "I didn't know that was going to happen."

  Flamma was shoving clothes into a bag. Judging by the size of the red satin garment she was wearing, Remo gauged that the bag-a small model's hat box-would hold enough changes of clothes for an around-the-world trip. Twice. On foot.

  "What'd you think was going to happen?" Remo said. He lounged on the bed as Flamma breezed about the small motel room showing him lots of flesh and very little interest.

  "I thought they were going to yell at Wesley and embarrass him and that would be that and I'd be even because he wasn't going to make my movie."

  "Sheep Dip, wasn't it?" Remo asked.

  "Animal Instincts," Flamma corrected. "But I didn't expect anybody to get killed. Even if the Reverend Muckley was an old pervert."

  "Who hired you?" asked Remo. He had gotten into her room by showing an old card he carried, one of many, which announced that Remo McElaney was an investigator for the United States Senate Select Subcommittee on Grain Purchases and Natural Resources. He could just as easily have shown her a card listing himself as an FBI agent, a CIA man, a Treasury man, a Jersey City cop, or a field representative for the International Fish and Game Commission. But Grain Purchases and Natural Resources was the first one that had come out of his pocket. Flamma was so nervous she hadn't bothered to look at it closely. People never did.

  "Will Bobbin," she answered. "Well, he didn't exactly hire me but he paid my way out here and he promised me a screen test."

  "If you run now, you'll blow the screen test," said Remo.

  "It's all right. I'm getting two pages in the National Star. That'll get me all the screen tests I want," Flamma said. "Anyway, where the hell is Bobbin when I need him? I need protection," she said.

  "Why?" asked Remo. "Somebody after you?"

  "Who the fuck knows?" she said. Without any seeming regard for Remo's presence, she took off her red satin top and, barebreasted, began to root in a drawer for a thin halter top that she began to put on.

  "Who the hell was after Muckley, that twerp?" she asked. "If Wesley's involved, I don't know. That man just may go crazy. He may want us all killed and that dyke with him is just the bitch to do it."

  "Theodosia?" asked Remo.

  "Right. Theodore," said Flamma.

  She had her top on and now she peeled off her red satin G-string. Bottomless and blasé, she rooted around in the drawer for slacks to wear.

  She found a pair and began to slip them on.

  Remo said, "Maybe Bobbin. But why would Bobbin want to have Muckley killed?"

  She pulled her trousers up. "Beats me," she said. "Bobbin put me on to Muckley though. I kind of thought they were working together." She shrugged, an ample movement that earthquaked the mountains of her breasts and let them drop. "Some kind of falling out?" she suggested.

  "Maybe." Remo got up from the bed. He stood behind Flamma who was tossing her makeup from a dresser drawer into the small bag.

  He touched her on the shoulders, then let his fingers move over to one of the long tendons in her neck and began slowly rotating around the skin at the joint of her neck and shoulder.

  She lolled her head to one side, like a child being tickled. "Ummmmmm," she said contentedly.

  "Where's Will Bobbin now?" Remo asked.

  "I don't know. Don't stop that. It feels good. Do all you government men do this?"

  "When'd you see him last?" Remo changed his attention to a spot in the center of Flamma's bare back. She arched like a kitten.

  "Bobbin? After the press conference," she said.

  "Where?"

  "A cocktail lounge in town. I was with a reporter and Bobbin was in the bar and he made me promise not to tell the guy who he was. Make bigger circles. I asked him where he was going."

  Remo made bigger circles. Flamma reached behind her and pulled Remo's hips closer to her.

  "What'd he say?" Remo asked.

  "He said he was going to hang around town until Wesley left. He wanted to be sure." She turned and ground her body against Remo.

  "You really have to go?" she asked.

  "Yeah. Did you forget your plane?"

  "I wouldn't mind missing it if you're going to hang around," Flamma said.

  "Did you ever see Bobbin with a small Oriental?" Remo asked.

  She shook her head and then narrowed her eyes, looking at Remo suspiciously. "What has all this got to do with you?" she asked. "With natural resources?"

  "Flamma," said Remo, "you're one of our country's greatest natural resources."

  "You're right. Even better than oil, 'cause I don't run dry."

  She lifted her mouth to be kissed. Remo pressed his lips against her neck and felt her shudder.

  He waited until she was finished packing and put her in a taxicab for the airport. As he watched her drive away, he realized he was no closer to the assassin, and who hired him, than he had been before. But there was a feeling, too, in his stomach that that problem would soon be resolved.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Chiun was in Wesley Pruiss's room. Pruiss had his face buried in the pillow as if to stifle some heartrending personal agony and to prevent the world from seeing his tears. Chiun was reciting the same Ung epic. Remo could tell that, as he came into the room, because Chiun was still making the same hand motions to depict a bee and a flower.

  Chiun silenced Remo with an index finger upraised in warning. He had just gotten to the big dramatic part of the epic where the flower opens to greet the morning sun and the bee swoops in.

  Remo waited in the doorway but Pruiss saw him and his face grew alive and animated.

  "Hey, you," he called. Chiun kept talking. Remo stood as if rooted.

  "Come here, will you?" Pruiss said.

  Chiun looked at Pruiss, then at Remo, then nodded toward Remo who came forward. As he passed Chiun, the old Korean shook his head sadly: "I think I've lost him somehow."

  "You know what they say about casting pearls before swine, Little Father," said Remo.

  Chiun went to the window and looked out as Remo stood at Pruiss's bedside. The publisher whispered to him, agonizedly, "Doesn't he ever stop?" He nodded toward Chiun.

  "The only way to stop him to is make him mad at you. Tell him you like Chinese poetry better or something. That might work. It's got one drawback though."

  "What's that?" Pruiss asked.

  "If you make him too mad, h
e might just fillet you like a flounder. Where's Theodosia?"

  "I don't know. I told her to reorder all those solar energy supplies. I heard about Muckley. Was it the same guy who got me?"

  Remo nodded. "And the three bodyguards," he said.

  "The oil companies are bastards," Pruiss said. "I never knew I was getting into this."

  "Theo finally convinced you," Remo said.

  "Yeah, Well, if they think they're going to frighten me, they got another thing coming. I got them by the short hairs," Pruiss said.

  "How?"

  "I signed some papers a little while ago. If I die, everything goes over to Theodosia. And I told her to tell the press that. That'll let the bastards know we're not going to be scared off. And if that sucker with the knives gets me, then Theo takes over and the energy project goes on anyway. That should make them think twice before coming after me again, right?"

  "Dope," Reno said. He shook his head.

  "What do you mean?"

  "They killed all this many people," Remo said. "What makes you think they're going to worry about just one more? All you've done is add Theo to the target list. Where the hell is she?"

  The impact of what he had done finally sank in on Pruiss. His beefy face looked strained and there were tension lines around his mouth. "It was her idea," he sputtered.

  "Swell," said Remo in disgust. He wheeled away from Pruiss and went down the hall to look for Theodosia. But her room and Baya Barn's were empty. He searched the woman's room; his motel room key was gone.

  "Chiun, I'm going to look for Theo. I think she might be next."

  "I will stay here," Chiun said. "This one has not yet heard the ending of my poem."

  "Go," Pruiss said in desperation. "Save Theo," he told Chiun.

  "A loving heart is the mark of all good men," Chiun said. "But I will stay here nevertheless. You go, Remo. My place is here."

  The only vehicle parked downstairs was the Pruiss ambulance and Remo hopped into it and sped from the driveway.

  From a vantage point in the trees across from the house, the assassin watched him go. And hoped he would return soon.

  Remo pulled the ambulance into the motel parking lot and ran toward the two rooms he and Chiun had shared when they first reached town.