Terror Squad

by Warren Murphy

  Perhaps Chiun was guilty of error; might he be overestimating the quality of their opponent? He thought about this as he moved. No, he had not. Their student was himself an adept at the secrets of Sinanju. There was no way that he would move stupidly.

  And yet there had been much seeming stupidity in everything done thus far.

  Chiun put the question behind him as he moved closer to the entranceway to the U.N. building, sifting through policemen and guards and other people whose eyes lacked the power to fix upon his motion.

  It was easy to see Smith’s men. He and Remo had joked, but they were right. Smith’s men wore trench coats and hats with press cards in them, and carried cameras which they aimed at the crowds, without ever bothering to depress the shutters. And yes, there was Smith too, clad the same way, up on the steps of the building. Chiun shook his head. Oh well, he would be sure not to hit anyone wearing a trench coat.

  Now—where would the attack on the delegates come from?

  Deception was the keystone of everything that had been done so far. The attack would not be frontal. The assassins would be disguised.

  Chiun looked around him. As newsmen? No, no one trusted newsmen, and policemen in emergency situations delighted in abusing them and demanding credentials. Perhaps as policemen? No, there were too many policemen who would have the opportunity to see through such disguises. As clergymen? No. There would be no reason for a group of clergymen to gather. Their presence alone would be suspicious,

  Chiun looked around. Who could pass through the lines without question? Without the press interfering with them, without the police stopping them?

  Of course.

  He began to move toward the right edge of the plaza in front of the building’s main entrance, toward a group of Army officers who were now moving resolutely through the crowd, through the police lines, toward the building. Chiun knew. The assassins had come as a military detail, and no one would question them, until it was too late.

  It was adequate, Chiun told himself, but he still wondered why the attack was to be handled this way. It was defective in concept, and their opponent should have known better.

  · · ·

  The front steps of the Museum of Natural History were sealed off by ropes with signs posted: closed today.

  Remo went down the pedestrian ramp to the slightly below-ground first floor level. The door there was locked also and with the heel of his hand, he smashed out the locking mechanism so that the door opened easily. Behind him, in the taxicab, P. Worthington Rosenbaum wondered whether or not to call the police, then remembered the fifty dollar tip the man had given him, and decided that anything that happened at the museum was not the business of P. Worthington Rosenbaum.

  Although it was summer, it was cool and dark in the building. Remo took a few steps forward across the highly polished marble floors into the central first floor reception hall. A long-ago memory told him that stairs were to the left and right of the passageway. In a small office on the corner of the first floor, a bearded young man sat, with a phone to his ear.

  “He’s here,” he hissed.

  He nodded as the voice came back: “Good. Follow him to the top floor. Then kill him.”

  “But suppose he doesn’t go to the top floor?”

  “He will. And when you are done with him, call me,” the voice said, almost as an afterthought.

  Remo moved to the stairs and started up. He would have to begin at the top floor; that reduced the chance of the prey escaping. It was one of the things Chiun had taught him.

  On the top floor of the museum, the stairs led into a corridor at the end of which stood the dinosaur room. Remo moved into the room and looked around. There was brontosaurus, as he had remembered him as a child. He moved through the big, high gallery. There at the end was T. Rex, still evil and powerful looking although only a skeleton, towering high over Remo. This was the place. This entire building. The place of dead animals.

  Remo heard a sound behind him and turned as the bearded youth came through the door corridor, clad all in black, wearing a black gi, a karate costume which in white is a formal attacking uniform, but in black is an affectation.

  “Well, if it ain’t the Cisco kid,” Remo said.

  The bearded man wasted no time. With a deep rumble of sound in his throat, he was in the air moving toward Remo, his leg tucked under him to unleash a kick, his right hand cocked high overhead to deliver a crushing hand mace.

  The leap was long and high, right out of Nureyev. The conclusion was pure Buster Keaton. Before he could fire off a blow with either hand or foot, his throat ran into Remo’s upthrust hand. The hardened heel buried itself deep in the man’s Adam’s apple. The bone and cartilage turned to mush under the hand and the man’s leap stopped, as if he were a soft tomato plopping against a brick wall. He dropped heavily to the marble floor, without even a gasp or a groan.

  So much for Cisco.

  When the telephone had not rung in three hundred seconds, the small yellow man on the second floor smiled, and looked at Joan Hacker.

  “He has breached our first line of defense,” he said.

  “You mean?”

  “Our man in black is dead. Yes,” the yellow man nodded.

  “Why, that’s terrible,” Joan said. “How can you be so calm? That’s just awful.”

  “Spoken like a true revolutionary. We capture airplanes and shoot hostages. Fine. We shoot unsuspecting athletes. Fine. We bring about the death of an innocent old butcher. Fine. We prepare this morning to kill a score of diplomats. Fine. But we should worry about the life of one high school dropout, whose karate technique was, to tell the truth, abysmal.”

  “Yes, but those other people are just…well, they’re the enemy…agents of reactionary Wall Street imperialism. And the man downstairs…well, he was our man.”

  “No, my dear,” the yellow man said. “They are all the same. They are all men. No matter what label they bear, they are all men. Only the unthinking and the unmerciful label them as agents of this or that, and then only so that they can justify their own refusal to treat each of them as a man. It is a greater justice to kill a man, knowing full well that you are killing a man and not just ripping off a label. It gives meaning to that man’s death and richness to one’s own accomplishment.”

  “But that flies in the face of our ideology,” Joan sputtered.

  “As well it might,” the yellow man said. “Because in this world, there is no ideology. There is only power. And power comes from life.”

  He stood up behind the small desk and leaned forward to Joan, who inexplicably recoiled in her seat. “I will share with you a secret,” he said. “All these preparations, all these deaths, all have been undertaken with one purpose in mind. Not the glorification of some lunatic revolutionary ideal; not the bringing to power of unlettered savages whose unworthiness to rule is proven by their willingness to follow where ideology leads. Everything you and I have done has had only one purpose: the destruction of two men.”

  “Two men? You mean, Remo and the old…the old Oriental?”

  “Yes. Remo, who would take unto himself the secrets of our ancient house, and Chiun, the elderly Oriental as you call him, who is the reigning Master of Sinanju and whose existence will always stand between me and my goals.”

  “I don’t think that’s revolutionary a bit.” Joan Hacker sniffed. Suddenly she did not like this at all. It wasn’t noble, like liberating an airplane or bombing an embassy. It was like murder.

  “The man who wins can apply any labels he wishes,” the yellow man said, his hazel eyes glinting. “Enough now. He will soon be here.”

  The fourth floor was empty and so was the third. Remo thought of the last time he had seen the museum, many years before. Remo was just another faceless kid in a crowd of orphans, who had never seen anything. It was back before cultural enrichment was considered an alternative to learning to read and write, and it was only when the entire class had mastered reading and writing that the nuns agree
d to take them to the museum. Then it had been packed and noisy, but today it was empty and still, cold drafts were sweeping down the high broad corridors and stairwells, and it seemed a fitting place for the legend of the dead animals to end.

  Remo remembered how the entire class had suffered and waited while Spinky, the class idiot, had suffered through reading lessons until he finally grasped the concept of words. Every day had seemed like a month. Well, Spinky was long behind him now; so was Newark and the orphanage and his childhood. All that was left of the Remo who had been was a first name. Not even a face or a random fingerprint existed to say that he had been here. And now as he moved smoothly down the wide twisting flight of steps to the second floor, he thought he would trade in everything to be back in the orphanage, to be wearing one dollar surplus Army sneakers along these halls, instead of thirty-four-dollar leather tennis shoes.

  He stopped in the middle of the last flight of steps. At the bottom stood a big black man, wearing a dashiki. He looked up at Remo with a smile, then began up the stairs. Remo backed up until he was on the landing, midway between the third and second floor, Right. He thought so. Another big black man was heading down on him from the third floor.

  “Howdy,” Remo said. “Ah come to jine up with yo third world.”

  “Ave atque vale,” one of the men said.

  “That mean, hail and farewell,” the other said.

  “Good,” Remo said. “Now do you know the Whiffenpoof Song? If you want, I’ll hum a few bars. Let’s see. Through the tables down at Morey’s…or is it to the tables. Anyway, it goes, la, da, da, da, to the place where Louie dwells…” To their blank look, Remo said, “Don’t know that one, huh? How about The Crawdad Song? If you sing it, I’ll yodel in the high spots.”

  Remo’s back was now against the marble wall on the landing. It felt cold against his back, through his thin shirt, and he tensed his muscles against it, feeling them writhe against the stone.

  Then the two big men were in front of him, and without warning, they fired heavy fists at his face. Remo paused, waited, then slid under the two punches. Rather than hit the wall with their fists, the men recoiled, but Remo was now between and behind them. He leaped into the air, and then flailed back with both elbows. Each elbow hit the back of a head, and the force of Remo’s blows drove the faces forward into the unyielding cold marble. He heard two separate sets of cracks: one set as his elbows hit the men’s skulls; the second set as their faces splashed and broke against the stone wall.

  He stepped away without looking and heard them sink to the floor behind him. Then he was moving down the stairs again, three at a time.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and then he heard it. Clap, clap, clap. A small and delicate round of applause. He looked to his left. Nothing. He moved to the right, following the sound, until he stood before the open doors leading to a large gallery. A broad balcony ran, around the gallery, overlooking the first floor. Standing in front of him, near the stairs that led down to the well of the gallery, was Joan Hacker. And with her…Remo grinned. He had been right. It was Nuihc.

  He stopped clapping as his hazel eyes met Remo’s deep brown ones.

  “I knew it was you,” Remo said.

  “Did Chiun not tell you?” Nuihc asked.

  Remo shook his head. “No. He has this funny idea that your name is not to be mentioned except in a funeral service. Something about your being a disgrace to his teaching and to his House.”

  “Poor old Chiun,” Nuihc said. “In different times, in different circumstances, my father’s brother would have been quite a man to know. But now, he is simply…well—out of it, to use your idiom.”

  Remo shook his head. “I have a hunch that the graveyards of the world are filled with men who decided that Chiun was out of it.”

  “Yes. But none of them are named Nuihc. None of them is blood of Chiun’s blood. None of them is from the House of Sinanju. And none of them…”

  “None of them is a traitor to his heritage; none of them the kind of animal who recruits these poor mindless things to murder and rape for him. Why, Nuihc? Why terrorism?” Remo asked.

  Joan Hacker’s eyes had followed their conversation as if it were a tennis match. Now she turned again from Remo, as Nuihc laughed. He leaned back against the marble railing and laughed heavily, a high piercing laugh that reminded Remo eerily of Chiun’s high-pitched cackle. As he threw his head back, Remo could see behind him the cables holding the ninety-foot replica of the giant blue whale, largest animal ever to live on earth. The whale’s shadow darkened the room.

  “You still do not know, do you, white man?” Nuihc asked.

  “Know what?” Remo said. And for the first time, he was uneasy.

  “None of this has anything to do with terrorism. Did Chiun not tell you of the dog that barks and the dog that bites?”

  “So?”

  “So all the terrorism has been the dog that barks. The dog’s bite was aimed at you and your aged friend. You two were the targets. Everything was aimed to that end. The plane whose hijackers insisted that they go to Los Angeles. That was so that I could be sure your government would call you in. The attack on the airport and the attack on the three colonels. Designed to bring you in closer and closer, deep into the target ring.”

  “It’s one thing to name a target,” Remo said. “It’s another to hit it.”

  “But that is the beauty of it,” Nuihc said. “You will hit it for me. You have no doubt dispatched poor Chiun to the United Nations, there to save the lives of diplomats whose lives are worthless. And there Chiun will do what Masters have been trained to do. He will move into and among the enemy. And then, too late, he will find that not the diplomats, but he himself, is the target.” Without looking at the watch he wore on his delicate wrist, Nuihc said: “It is ten forty-two. We can watch if you wish.”

  He motioned to Joan Hacker, who stepped aside and turned on a small battery-operated television set which was propped on the marble railing that ran around the balcony. The sound came on instantly—the roar of people chanting—and seconds later, the picture swirled on, showing the crowd milling about in front of the United Nations building, held back by squads of uniformed New York police.

  As Remo watched, he saw, with a sinking feeling, the figure of Dr. Harold W. Smith, moving around behind the police lines. But there was no sign of Chiun.

  The announcer’s voice said: “The diplomats from the major countries all have arrived now and are inside. The conference should soon begin. But the mood of the crowd is growing uglier by the moment and we understand that police reinforcements are being sent to the scene. We now switch to our pool cameras inside the meeting chambers.”

  The camera blanked, and then another camera picked up the inside of the assembly chambers where the anti-terrorist meeting would be held. It was mostly empty, although the few gallery seats were already filled. A few second-string diplomats sat at chairs, and young aides scurried in and out, carrying papers and notebooks, placing them at different desks.

  There was only a hushed buzz from the gallery as the camera watched and then another announcer’s voice intoned: “You are looking at the main assembly chamber where today’s conference on terrorism will be held. All is in readiness for the meeting which is expected to begin in another fifteen minutes. While the crowd outside is growing unruly, the feeling of diplomats here is that this is a great step forward for the forces of humanity in…”

  His voice was punctuated by a couple of sharp reports. Two. Then three. Then a fusillade of what were obviously bullets. The announcer’s voice again: “We don’t know what’s going on here, and we don’t wish to alarm anyone unduly. But those certainly sounded like shots. I’m going to try to find out what happened, and in the meantime, we’ll return you outside.”

  The screen blanked again and Nuihc began to laugh.

  “Goodbye, dear Uncle Chiun,” he said, cackling, and then nodded his head to Joan Hacker to turn off the television. He looked now at Re
mo.

  “You now look at the new Master of Sinanju,” Nuihc said.

  Remo just stared.

  “Do you not see? Are you so blind? Everything was geared for this moment. It was essential to produce a new level of skill in terrorism; that was the only way to assure that your government would assign you and Chiun the task of stopping me. That was why the trick of bringing the weapons onto the planes, past the new metal detectors. Did you wonder how I did it?”

  “Anyone could have figured it out,” Remo said, dully, his mind now whirling in confusion, in shock at the thought of Chiun dead.

  “Yes, but no one did. Metal detectors are designed by definition to detect hidden metal. We brought the weapons aboard planes in the open, mounted onto obvious metal objects that people are psychologically used to not inspecting.”

  Remo thought for a moment; the thing had gnawed at his mind. “The wheelchair,” he said.

  “Of course,” Nuihc said. “The wheelchairs were reinforced with weapons parts. No one likes to look at a wheelchair, so no one examines it closely. And of course, since it is metal, it shows up as metal on the metal detector. And no one pays it any attention. Clever, was it not?”

  “A parlor trick,” Remo said. “You should see what John Scarne can do with a deck of cards.”

  “You deprecate my skills,” Nuihc said. “Think of the training. The instant competence. Did Chiun explain that competence can be bestowed easily, if the trainee is expendable? You can make him able to deal with a few simple things very well. But that flash of training breaks down the moment anything unforeseen or unexpected enters into the mission.”