The Ultimate Death td-88

by Warren Murphy

  The busy Chinese shopkeeper had dropped his broom to the sidewalk and was advancing on Remo and Chiun, his right hand slashing and jerking before his own fierce face. Remo saw his gyonshi fingernail making deadly circles in the air.

  "What is this-Night of the Living Take-Out?" he exclaimed.

  Chiun was sliding off to one side, his hands free, alert to attack. "The Leader is diabolical in his ways," he cautioned. "He has set traps for us wherever we venture."

  "Yeah, and he must have spent the last decade breeding like a bunny."

  Remo and Chiun moved in such a way as to contain the shopkeeper in the shrinking space between them. As he realized he was being trapped he reacted feverishly, slicing first at one, then wheeling and stabbing at the other. Remo and Chiun dodged the attacks easily, but neither moved to stop the man. They were Sinanju, and understood that the speed of the dead thing before them was equal to their own.

  It was clear that Chiun wished for Remo to dispatch the man, but there was something in the gyonshi's eyes. The same dead light had been in the eyes of the bogus chicken inspector Sal Mondello and Don Pietro Scubisci. The Chinese was not in control of his own actions.

  "Why do you hesitate?" Chiun asked Remo. He faded back just as the shopkeeper's index finger whizzed past his face, barely missing the Master of Sinanju's tuft of beard.

  "It isn't this guy's fault he's like this," Remo said. He avoided a thrust by skipping to one side. The shopkeeper spun back on the Master of Sinanju.

  "Pah!" Chiun said, disdainfully. "You are in need of practice against these vermin. If you wish to be merciful, end its suffering."

  "Like I have a choice," Remo muttered, moving toward the wild-eyed shopkeeper.

  A frantic voice came from across the street. It was high, lilting, although distinctly male.

  "Master of Sinanju, behind you!" it called.

  Remo had sensed the approaching danger, as he was certain Chiun had. A stocky Chinese woman of about fifty was stomping out of the entrance to the shop, her gyonshi fingernail pointed at Chiun like a deadly mini-lance.

  The shopkeeper's wife, Remo figured. He looked about, in search of the author of the warning. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a figure in black. Then, he turned his attention to his own adversary.

  Reacting, Chiun grabbed the female gyonshi by her plump wrist and seemed to exert only an easy tug. The woman's feet left the ground and she orbited once around. As she passed him, Chiun's other hand flew out and her throat slashed itself open on the outstretched fingernail.

  Centrifugal force deposited her against a light pole, where she slid slowly to the sidewalk, her arms and legs bent at crazy, impossible angles.

  It would have seemed to any onlooker as if the pair had simply performed a rather flamboyant dance step, after which the woman had sat down to catch her breath.

  The orange mist seeped from her open throat.

  "You are free now," the Master of Sinanju told the broken corpse without malice.

  Satisfied, Chiun turned away. His wrinkled face smoothed in shock.

  For there was no sign of his pupil.

  "Remo!" Chiun called plaintively. "My son!"

  And far in the back of his mind, he remembered the words of his ancient enemy.

  The words were, "Separate and conquer."

  Remo used his thick wrists to block the driving nail of his foe. But the gyonshi was stubborn. With the first parry, he cracked a wrist bone against Remo's wrist. He tried again. Another bone broke.

  The hand hung off the fractured wrist like a drooping sunflower. The man's flat face also drooped.

  Defeated, the Chinese shopkeeper ducked inside his shop. Without hesitation, Remo went after him.

  He found the man trying to claw his way through the thick, triple-locked security door in the back storeroom.

  "Sorry, pal," Remo said, spinning the man around by the shoulder. He slashed at the exposed throat, but his fingernails-although capable of cutting glass-weren't long enough to pierce pliable flesh, and Remo was forced to use a box-cutting razor against the man's yellow throat. He felt like a ghoul-Masters of Sinanju were forbidden the use of weapons.

  Remo waited until the body had vented its puff of orange smoke before he left.

  When he emerged into the sunlight a moment later, a crowd had already begun to form around the shopkeeper's wife. Ignoring the commotion, he glanced up and down Mott Street.

  It was deceptively quiet. People passed in and out of doorways. Horns honked. Children shouted.

  A lone squad car had arrived to investigate the disturbance at the Neighborhood Improvement Association.

  But there was no sign of Chiun.

  Remo's heart gave a leap of fear.

  From somewhere, he seemed to catch a whisper on the wind. The whisper seemed to be in Chiun's squeaky tone of voice.

  And the words the wind seemed to whisper were, "Separate and conquer."

  Chapter 15

  The aged door creaked in a slow and deliberate complaint as it was opened, the rotted wood around the hinges threatening to tip the warped slab of wood back out into the musty hallway at any moment.

  The single bare bulb clicked on, illuminating the cluttered living area.

  Chiun stepped in.

  He stood in a long, musty room covered in bookshelves, work tables, and display cases. Hung along the walls were yin-yang symbols, warped circular mirrors, tattered bamboo umbrellas, rusty swords made of beaten Chinese coins, and the eighteen legendary weapons of China-including esoteric swords, spears, sais and nunchuks.

  "I must apologize, for I did not expect to bring the Master of Sinanju home with me," said the creature the Master of Sinanju had followed to this place. He wore a simple black tunic, black kapok pants, and black Chinese slippers.

  The man was thin, with a square face, a round chin, flat nose, and beady, amber, almond-shaped eyes. His hair was the color and consistency of wheat, but the most remarkable thing about him was his eyebrow.

  He possessed but one. It stretched across his brow and dropped on either side of his face almost to his shriveled cheeks, like a frame of bristly hair.

  Chiun picked his careful way through to the center of the shabby living room carpet and stood in stony silence.

  The door creaked shut behind him, blocking off the sounds of a strident argument in a neighboring apartment.

  "You do not need to thank me for warning you of the gyonshi female," intoned the creature.

  Chiun's countenance remained impassive. "And I will not," he replied flatly.

  A heavy pause clung like fog to the room's damp air.

  "You know of me, then?"

  Chiun's head turned, ever so slightly. "You are the Taoist with one eyebrow," Chiun responded. "An embalmer of Chinese. You are familiar with the ways of the dead-living or otherwise."

  The Taoist with one eyebrow kowtowed elaborately.

  "I am called Won Sik Lung," he murmured. "Like you, I have ancestral obligations. Like you, I am a sworn enemy of the gyonshi, who were thought extinct."

  Chiun returned the bow with a studied nod of his aged head. "You will tell me what I need to know that I may vanquish the vermin known as the Leader," he said coldly.

  The single eyebrow crept upward in surprise.

  "You must have seen him around here somewhere!" Remo was saying, his voice urgent.

  "About this high? In a silver kimono? No? Damn!"

  The Chinese girl skipped off, leaving Remo to prowl the byways of Chinatown. He had no idea where Chiun had gone off to. He had vanished.

  It would be like Chiun to do something like this, just to teach Remo a lesson. With Chinese vampires popping out of every doorway, Chiun decides to pull a disappearing act.

  "This had better be a stunt," Remo muttered to himself. "Please let it be a trick designed to teach me a lesson," he whispered.

  With a shiver, Remo suddenly thought of the orange wisps of smoke that had slipped from the throats of the poor Chinese couple behind him.
This was no lesson. Chiun was gone. And Remo was getting that cold feeling again. The one that reminded him that Chiun was now a hundred years old, and had not been quite the same since he had been brought back from the dead.

  Remo crossed to the opposite side of Mott Street. Voices called out to him as he ran, but they were drowned out by the commotion coming from around the Neighborhood Improvement Association. The first cruiser to arrive must have seen the bodies in the foyer and called for backup. There were also two ambulances parked beyond the rim of squad cars.

  Suddenly Remo remembered something. A voice. Master of Sinanju, behind you! it had shouted.

  He had caught a glimpse of a man. A Chinese, dressed entirely in black, like a mortician out of some old Western. He was tall, but Remo had gotten no impression of his face. Not that it would have helped. Despite long years of association with the Master of Sinanju, Remo still thought all Orientals looked pretty much the same.

  Great, he thought: Excuse me, have you seen an old Oriental gentleman in a kimono, about five feet tall, in the company of a slightly younger Oriental dressed entirely in black?

  What did they look like? Like Orientals. What else?

  He felt foolish thinking it. But it was his only lead.

  The first person he asked was a middle-aged Italian woman, sitting in a lawn chair outside a corner store.

  "Yeah, I seen 'em," she said casually, as if the pair were a couple of bankers out for a stroll during their lunch hour.

  "You did?"

  "You did say one was Korean, right?"

  "How do you tell the difference?" Remo wanted to know.

  The woman shrugged. "Same way I tell a Sicilian from a Neapolitan. Anyway, they went east on Canal. Say, whaddya doin'? Leggo my hand!"

  Remo released her hand. "Just checking your fingernails," he said. He darted down the street.

  "My ancestors know well of the gyonshi, O Master, for though Sinanju has faced them a handful of times in its glorious history, we have encountered them many, many times. For us it is an honor to sacrifice our lives to thwart this pestilence."

  "Speak not to me of Chinese honor, Taoist," Chiun spat. "My ears bleed."

  The gaunt embalmer's single eyebrow furrowed at its center, like a black caterpillar scrunching up on a leaf. He lowered his head in an informal bow. "I am confused, great Master. Did you not come to me for my knowledge of the gyonshi?"

  "I came for a single answer, Chinaman," Chiun responded. "And for this I may forgive the impertinence of your last utterance. If it is the answer I seek. Otherwise . . ." He let the threat hang between them.

  The Taoist seemed genuinely frightened. Good, Chiun thought. I have gotten the deformed creature's attention.

  The Taoist cleared his throat. "You would defeat the Leader?" he asked, his tone making it clear that the question was unnecessary. Chiun merely stood in silence.

  Like a nervous animal, the Taoist began glancing around the room. He stepped over a few scattered books and newspapers with Chinese printing, to a single door in the corner of the living room. It was tucked away behind a tattered easy chair. The door had once been painted green but the paint had long since peeled away, revealing a ghostly veneer of its original varnish.

  "Come into my personal sanctum," he bid.

  The Taoist pushed the door open. The room beyond was deeply shadowed. Lights from a hundred white ceremonial candles danced along its walls.

  "I will tell you all I know, Master of Sinanju," he said, ushering Chiun inside.

  "Then perhaps I will spare your life, Taoist with one eyebrow," Chiun responded as he passed inside.

  In the flickering candlelight, unnoticed by Chiun, a sparkle of light danced on the quicksilver sheen of the Taoist's index fingernail.

  On Canal Street, Remo found three others who had noticed the path taken by the pair of Orientals. All indicated the same general direction. As they pointed Remo inspected their fingernails for the telltale guillotine shape, but none of the other passersby bore the mark of a gyonshi.

  Remo was accosting a roasted-peanut vendor when a police officer came into view amid the crowd of pedestrian traffic. For a moment the cop seemed startled, but then he drew his revolver and aimed it carefully at Remo. "Hold it right there," he ordered nervously.

  "No time," Remo said absently. Chiun must be nearby. But there were a dozen possible doors. "Did you see them?" he asked the vendor urgently. "A Chinese and a Korean, together?"

  "You better make time, pal," warned the cop, his voice growing threatening. "A guy fitting your description was seen up where the Scubiscis hang out, just after the mass murder."

  "C'mon," Remo prompted the apron-clad man, "I don't have all day." He continued to ignore the cop, who stepped forward with increased belligerence.

  The vendor swallowed, uncertain. He glanced from Remo to the cop, then back to Remo again. He gave a feeble shrug. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I don't know from Koreans. I'm still gettin' used to all these chinks."

  The cop had his handcuffs out and was moving up on Remo. "You're coming with me."

  "Sorry, pal," Remo said, turning. "You've become a distraction."

  Remo's hands shot out, slapping the handcuffs away and plucking the weapon from the startled cop's outstretched hand. Simultaneously, Remo stabbed a pressure point at the side of the man's thick-muscled throat.

  The young policeman's pistol clattered to the sidewalk as he himself slid to the pavement. Remo propped the unconscious man against the side of a parked car. He focused his attention back on the vendor.

  "Oriental in kimono. Oriental in black. Which way?"

  "Uh, there," the vendor said, pointing with a trembling hand. "They were heading for that building."

  He pointed to a brick apartment building, with some kind of black-curtained storefront on the first floor. A sign over the glass read WON SIK LUNG-EMBALMING.

  "Thanks!" Remo called after him. "And clean your fingernails!"

  Upon entering the smaller room the Taoist had lit another of the many thick candles, his right hand hidden from view in the long sleeves of his midnight-black tunic.

  "For you, Master of Sinanju," he said. His bow this time was more formal.

  Chiun returned the bow with the slightest nod of his head.

  The Taoist now stood at one end of a low wooden table that sat in the room's center. The flames from several dozen candles danced in the lazy air currents of the room, where a bowl of black blood had been positioned carefully between the candles. Several worn pillows were spread out on the floor around the taboret.

  The Taoist beckoned Chiun to join him.

  Reluctantly, the Master of Sinanju gathered up his skirts and knelt before the taboret. Only then did the Taoist himself fall to his knees.

  They faced one another across the taboret, smoking shadows worrying their grim features.

  "You have heard in your travels, O wise Master of Sinanju, of the blight upon this land known as AIDS?"

  Chiun merely nodded. The embalmer went on.

  "There have been some who have accused the gyonshi of introducing this virus, but it is known to affect far too few in its current form. Perhaps, in years, it will swell into a pestilence, but the Leader no longer has years. The gyonshi Leader craves the Final Death, and would not settle for less."

  "I know of their methods," Chiun responded stiffly.

  "But it is not known to many that the vampirism which affects the Leader's minions is a virus much like this AIDS. It is transmitted from one gyonshi host to another, by means of their own blood seeping up from beneath their fingernails. Enough of the poison remains in their bloodstream that they may contaminate victims forever. It is in this manner that they recruit innocents to do their bidding. And there is only one sure method of purging the host to the gyonshi poison: liberating the bad air."

  "The orange smoke," Chiun said, nodding. He was staring at a faraway point in his past.

  The Taoist nodded as well. "Your thoughts are of..?"

  C
hiun's head snapped up. "My thoughts are my own, Taoist," he said with contempt. His eyes were angry slits.

  "I meant no disrespect . . . ." the Chinese said quickly.

  "I would know how to stop the Leader," Chiun demanded. He had had enough of this insolent embalmer. "Speak, Chinaman, or I will wrench your viper's tongue from your head, and with it flog your miserable carcass."

  The Taoist with one eyebrow gave a jittery jump. Chiun was secretly pleased. Perhaps this loquacious creature would finally cease his meandering and come to the point.

  The fear on the Taoist's face melded with resolve. He leaned toward Chiun across the small table, careful to keep his right hand out of view.

  "Come closer, Master of Sinanju," he beckoned. "That I might whisper to you the secret of eradicating the gyonshi scourge forever . . . ."

  The building was a hundred-year-old crumbling brick edifice that stood seven stories high. Inside, Remo found himself in a narrow hall made up of concrete bricks. They were painted a gaudy black, and over this was a painting of a long, coiling scarlet-and-jade dragon that led up a listing staircase.

  There was no fast way to search the building. Remo vaulted up the creaking, rotted stairs to the second-floor hallway and began opening doors, locked and unlocked.

  Curious Chinese faces craned out into the hallway. Those who had had their doors splintered open recoiled in fear. None belonged to the mysterious Chinese in black.

  "Sorry, wrong number," Remo said by way of apology. He left the puzzled tenants in the second-floor hall and took the flight of stairs to the third floor in three steps.

  He began splintering locks again. His face reflected great worry. Chinese vampires were dangerous. And the Master of Sinanju, although wonderfully recovered from his ordeal, was still not vet the Chiun of old-if he ever would be so again.

  And even a Chinese vampire could get lucky, Remo knew.

  If Chiun's tales could be believed, they had decimated Sinanju in times long ago.

  Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, had many things on his mind. Not least of which was the ignominy of having come to a mere Chinaman for help. But as long as Remo never learned of this, it would be between Chiun and his ancestors.