He hoped to return to the street before Remo could locate him. It would do the boy good to worry. From worry, comes appreciation.
"It is obvious that the Leader intends for the Final Death to sweep America," the Taoist was saying.
Chiun nodded. "He attempted to poison American cattle years ago, when this land gorged itself on beef."
"And in this slightly more enlightened age, he has visited his foulness upon fowl," added the Taoist.
"You know of the poisoned ducks?" Chiun demanded, surprised.
"Not ducks. Chicken. Word has traveled to Chinatown. The dead are many. I expected something of this sort. So many years . . . nothing. And then an outbreak of gyonshism more than a decade ago in Houston. Many Chinese call upon the family of Won to ensure that their ancestors rest easy and motionless. Much good blood and bad air was released. Then, quiet again. Until now. Gyonshi are abroad in Chinatown, and elsewhere. And elsewhere, men die from eating the flesh of chickens."
Chiun frowned, understanding that the Final Death could be achieved only through huge numbers. Chicken might accomplish this-but not duck.
Yes, the Leader wanted the Final Death, longed for it as he never had before, but he now desired something even greater. The destruction of Sinanju.
The Leader knew the special dietary requirements of a Master of Sinanju. There could be no other reason to baste ducks with one of his filthy gyonshi poisons. Americans, thinking they were eating healthier, were consuming more chicken-not duck.
"The duck was meant to flush Sinanju out into the open," Chiun murmured aloud. "It was intended that Sinanju should go to the Chicken King. The first trap lay there. The second at Three-G. A third at the stronghold of the Roman, Scubisci."
"Sinanju is not so easily bested," the Taoist said in a servile tone.
The Master of Sinanju waved aside the flattery. Chiun would protect Remo, but now that his pupil knew of the gyonshi threat he could be left alone for a moment. While Chiun conferred with the legendary vampire-killer.
"Speak, embalmer. How may I strike at these vermin without bringing risk to my own house?"
The Taoist leaned closer. His single eyebrow rose higher on his pale amber forehead. The candles that were spread around the darkened room cast weird shadows on his long, funereal face.
Chiun leaned closer.
The Taoist's lips pursed, as he prepared to impart the secret of the Leader's fatal weakness to the Master of Sinanju.
The Master of Sinanju looked into the candlelight reflections flickering deep in the Taoist's amber eyes.
The eyes!
But the hand was already up. Over the table. Across the space between them, like a viper.
Chiun felt a brush against his throat. Very light. No pain.
Too late . . . The Master of Sinanju had recognized the eyes too late.
A cloud of black descended over the room as the Taoist leaned back, eyes burning with a wild light. Then the cloud descended over the Taoist as well, blocking him from view. The cloud was everywhere in the room, but it was not in the room. It was in Chiun's mind, and his mind was accepting the darkness like a longawaited shroud-and that shroud was somehow comforting.
And then the blackness was everywhere, as the last light of consciousness flickered and died.
The Master of Sinanju slumped to the floor.
On the fifth floor a man and woman were having a knock-down, drag-out over something. From the smattering of Chinese Remo understood, he gathered that it had to do with the husband's interest in a very young female employee at his place of business. The woman cried and screamed alternately, the husband yelled and apologized. Glassware broke in punctuation.
The fight must have been going on for some time, because the fifth-floor neighbors were slow to respond to Remo's persistent knocking. When they did peer out, Remo didn't see the blackclad Chinese among them.
There was one door that failed to open. Remo cocked an ear and listened. There was someone inside. A man. Breathing oddly.
But he was alone.
Remo was about to spring up the next flight of stairs when he heard it. It was more shallow than usual, but the intake of air was unmistakable.
"Chiun! "
Remo cleaved the ancient door in two with a single downward stroke and burst into the apartment beyond.
A living room piled high with clutter greeted his anxious eyes. Remo wasted no time there. The breathing had come from farther back in the apartment.
Another door. This one he wrested apart on its hinges, as if it were moist paper. Door fragments spun through the air like shrapnel, embedding themselves in the walls on either side of the inner room.
Remo saw the body on the floor. Its back was to him, and it was curled in the fetal position, but Remo recognized the emerald dragon design woven on the back of the silver kimono.
"Chiun!" he breathed.
The thin figure from the street knelt above Chiun. The one who had warned them of the female gyonshi.
He looked up at Remo, his eyes those of the most vile demon from hell.
"The one you look to for guidance will help you no more, gweilo," he laughed. "The hour of the Final Death is come."
Bile rising in his throat, Remo fell upon the Taoist. Hands flew in a furious blur. Arms pounded with pneumatic precision. In seconds, the Chinese had been reduced to a quivering cone of jelly encased in its own black shroud.
When the body fell still, Remo drew the Taoist's own gyonshi fingernail across what had been his neck. In the shimmer of the candlelight, a puff of orange smoke rose and vanished.
He dropped to his knees beside the Master of Sinanju, holding the fragile head delicately in his lap, and said, "Not again, Little Father! I swear I won't lose you again!"
Tears squeezed from the corners of his pained eyes, as he gathered up his frail burden and bore him out of the bric-a-brac-littered apartment and down to the street below.
No one attempted to stop him. They all saw the expression on his face.
Chapter 16
It was a unforgivable breach of security, but Remo had threatened to take Folcroft apart, brick by brick, if Harold Smith did not comply with his demand for an immediate medevac.
The Coast Guard emergency rescue helicopter touched down on the widest, flattest roof in Chinatown, where Remo stood, holding the Master of Sinanju in his arms.
Less than thirty minutes later it alighted on the sloping lawn of Folcroft Sanitarium, near the decrepit docks on the edge of Long Island Sound.
Smith realized that medevacing a patient from lower Manhattan, at a time when the police were trying to clean up a gangland massacre, would be difficult to explain. He hoped he would not find himself in that position as, stooping, he met Remo under the sweeping helicopter blades.
"I have been trying to reach you all day," Smith said, by way of greeting.
Remo glared at him. "Congratulations," he said flatly, pushing past the CURE director.
The medical technicians had already been instructed how to carry the old man on the stretcher. They were not to drop, jostle, bounce, shake, or drag the old man. They were to do nothing that might cause the old Oriental any further injury. The young man named Remo had explained all this to them on the way from the city. When one of them told the young man not to tell them how to do their jobs, he informed them that they hadn't been listening properly and explained the entire procedure over again, this time dangling one of them out the open door of the rescue helicopter by his ankles to focus their attention.
When they climbed off the helicopter in Rye, the technicians carried the old Oriental as if he were a gossamer chrysalis, not a mere human being.
Smith followed a grim Remo Williams across the broad lawn. He was having difficulty keeping up with the young man. His belt hung loose, for his stomach still pained him.
"What happened?" Smith demanded.
"Poison," Remo shot back.
Smith paled visibly. "He did not eat chicken?"
"He d
id not," Remo snapped.
"Good."
"This is a thousand times worse."
"Remarkable," Dr. Lance Drew said, shaking his head in amazement.
"What is it, doctor?" Smith asked.
Dr. Drew started, as if surprised by the reminder that there was someone else in the room with him. He had forgotten, he had been so caught up in his work.
"It's simply incredible, Dr. Smith!" he said. "This gentleman is obviously terribly, terribly old, yet his reflexes are those of a man in-" He paused. "Actually, they're not like a man's at any age at all. His reflexes are astounding. Pulse, heart, respiration. He's a phenomenal example of human longevity." Dr. Drew peered down at Chiun's motionless form. "No doubt a strict vegetarian," he added.
Smith and Remo stood on the side of the bed opposite the doctor. Remo watched in tight silence, rotating his thick wrists absently, as Chiun's thin chest expanded and deflated with each breath.
"Yes, of course," Smith said, steering the doctor to the point. "But we are more concerned about his prognosis."
The doctor stood upright and heaved a sigh. "Coma," he said, simply. "The patient has been exposed to some form of toxin, I suspect. I can't be certain. See this?" He indicated a tiny pink mark on Chiun's throat. "That is the site of the infection. Has to be. When did this happen?"
"About an hour ago," Remo said, looking up. His deep-set eyes were filled with concern.
The doctor shook his head. "Impossible," he said. "That is scar tissue. The scab has already fallen off. The puncture must be at least a week old."
Smith cleared his throat. "That will be all for now, Doctor," he said hurriedly.
Dr. Drew took the hint and began to leave. "I don't know what this poison would have done to a person not blessed with his constitution," he said, indicating Chiun. "It's his nervous system that has been attacked." He shook his head slowly as he stared into Remo's pleading eyes. "There's nothing I can do for him. I'm sorry."
Smith closed the door after the doctor and approached Remo cautiously. "I, er, know what he means to you, Remo," he said, nodding at Chiun.
"Don't start, Smitty!" Remo snapped. "You don't have a clue what he means to me! So don't even bother!"
Smith cleared his throat again. The action still gave him considerable discomfort. "There is also the matter of the poisoned chickens," he said.
"You mean ducks. And how'd you know about them?"
Smith frowned. "I have had no reports about ducks having been tampered with. Only chickens. The death toll now stands at nearly two thousand individuals. What kind of madman would attempt wholesale poisoning?"
As this sank in, Remo's face twisted in anger.
"Damn! This is all your fault, Smith!"
"I fail to understand," Smith said vaguely.
"Houston? Fifteen years ago? That ring a bell?"
"Not quite . . ." Smith said.
"Houston General Hospital," Remo explained. "That's where I put the Leader fifteen years ago. Remember the Leader? Old? Wizened? Blind? Out to poison all meat-eaters, because he belonged to an ancient Chinese cult of blood-drinking Chinese vegetarian vampires?"
"My God," Harold Smith said hoarsely. "Of course, it is the same pattern. Only this time it's chicken instead of beef."
"You were supposed to underwrite his medical bills," Remo continued in a biting tone. "Well, you obviously let that tiny responsibility go to hell for a few measly bucks. That's the only explanation. You would have known he escaped, otherwise."
"If you will allow me to get a word in," Smith said frostily.
Remo went on, as if unhearing. "You did this, Smith. You did it to all those innocent people.
"This"-he pointed a shaking-with-rage finger at the Master of Sinanju-"is your fault. All because you were too freaking cheap to pay to clean the Leader's bedpans."
Smith's usually unflappable personality began to flap. "The Leader?" he muttered, his tired gray eyes blinking furiously.
"He escaped the hospital, and he started his 'Final Death' crapola all over again," Remo said flatly.
"The Leader?" Smith repeated, sounding more shocked than surprised. "But Remo, that is impossible."
"Oh, really?" Remo asked, planting his hands on his hips. "And why is that?"
"Because," Harold Smith said in a prim, colorless voice, "the Leader is safely confined here at Folcroft."
Chapter 17
Elvira McGlone felt like an outsider now.
Not that she hadn't felt like one since her first day at Gregory Green Gideon's Three-G, Incorporated. She simply didn't fit in. Never had. Elvira McGlone wore tailored business suits and severe skirts, while everyone else wallowed in tie-dyed jeans and bandannas. She ate pastrami sandwiches and drank tap water, while the others ate Three-G's bowel-busting health bars and drank bitter foreign bottled water; because they believed every stream and reservoir in America was polluted.
Elvira McGlone had thought things might change when the new owners took over. She recalled the old adage "a new broom sweeps clean," and fervently hoped that this new broom would sweep the rest of these retrograde hippies right back to the Age of Aquarium-or whatever starry era had spawned them. But if anything, the Three-G staff had only become more cliquish, leaving Elvira McGlone even further out in the cold than she had been.
And the worst, the absolute worst, thing about the whole affair, was that she was the one who had let the pair of them in.
It had happened right after what was to be her final meeting with Gideon, at which she had argued for better merchandising of their products. She had left her market projections in her Volvo and had gone out to get them.
When she had opened the entrance door, they were standing there. Just standing there. A redhead in a crisp nurse's uniform, and what was surely the oldest man in the world this side of Methuselah. They must have been staring at the closed door and when Elvira McGlone opened it, they stared at her.
"Do you invite us in?"
It was the old man who had spoken. Elvira figured they must be strung-out health freaks looking to take one of the free tours that Gideon gave to the public. He was forever giving away free samples, too, eating away at the Three-G bottom line.
"Why the hell not?" Elvira had muttered. "We welcome the halt and the lame, why not the blind and creepy?"
Elvira McGlone held the door open for them as they entered the Three-G building. They sniffed the air like dogs.
"We couldn't have come in unless you asked us," the redheaded nurse chirped inanely.
The elderly man-he looked Chinese-only smiled at her. His eyes were white as pearls and his breath smelled like he'd just swallowed a recently expired skunk.
Shaking her head, Elvira let the door swing shut behind them and went out to her car to retrieve her papers. She thought that it would end with that.
It didn't.
Somehow, that very week, the creepy pair had assumed ownership of Three-G. The stockholders, who consisted mainly of Gideon's fellow wallowers in granola, had installed them unanimously. Elvira McGlone was not told what had happened to Gideon. Her queries were met with blank-eyed evasions, even from the usually talkative veggie zealots, who until then had been a happy assemblage of Vegans and lacto-or lactovo-vegetarians.
Now they chanted "Reject meat!" and had become irredeemably macrobiotic.
It was all much too bizarre, even for Three-G.
Elvira McGlone clomped along the hallway nervously, her long, bloodred talons striking time on the back of her clipboard. It was funny how the place made her so uneasy now. She found herself missing Mr. Gideon. She felt bonecold every time she thought of him.
She steadied herself, realizing that she was being childish. She hadn't come this far this fast on the corporate fast track to be derailed by a mere change in management.
She breathed deeply, steadying her nerves as she reached for the knob to the office of the new vice-president, Mary Melissa Mercy. It was Mercy who made Elvira the most uncomfortable. She just wasn't . .
. right. And she was just too healthy. Unhealthily healthy. If there was such a thing.
Elvira paused at the door. There were voices coming from inside the office. Chanting.
It sounded to Elvira McGlone like some very weird aerobics class. Mary Melissa was calling out disjointed phrases, the others responding with even weirder mantras.
"The stomach is the center."
"Where life begins."
"No place in the afterlife."
"No place by God's side."
"The death of the stomach is the death of life."
"The homage to our God."
"The skeleton in the tree, symbolizing our strength and power."
"The burial of the innards."
"The Final Death."
The faddists must be talking shop again, Elvira decided.
When she pushed open the door to the room, Elvira McGlone discovered that these Three-G staffers weren't as strict with their vegetarianism as she had been led to understand.
The Three-G staff was arrayed around a long conference table. And they were not alone. They had been joined by several of the day's plant visitors.
These latter were not seated around the table, but splayed out on top of it.
Half of the tourists had been stripped of their skin, and their pulpy red subcutaneous flesh oozed blood. The rest were in the process of being eviscerated by members of the Three-G staff. Bloody strings of internal organs were being dragged from freshly gouged openings in the visitors' bellies. Hearts feebly pumped their last into small silver goblets. Some of the carcasses were being hauled out the broken window of Mary Melissa Mercy's office and into the garden beyond.
The pine floor was awash with blood. It was spilling from the drunkenly tilted silver goblets lifted to blood-smeared mouths.
The Vegans were actually drinking blood!
Elvira McGlone's mouth fell open, uncomprehending. A few Three-G staff members glanced up at her, their hands and faces streaked with red, their eyes hungry and animallike.
At the center, surveying all, Mary Melissa Mercy sat quietly on her desk, her clothes immaculate, her manner that of the calmest CEO. She, too, looked over at Elvira McGlone.
Elvira's brian worked furiously, trying to sort out the horrors her eyes beheld and at the same time determine some way to save herself from the fate of the pathetic half-human corpses littering her superior's office. If business school had taught Elvira McGlone anything at all, it was how to think on her feet.
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