The Last Alchemist td-64

by Warren Murphy

  When he finished, he was told not to bother to climb out.

  "Hey, buddy. If they are going to pay me off like this," said the man in the open grave, "what do you think they are going to do to you?"

  "Give me the shovel," said the man standing above the grave. He had light blond hair and delicate features, and a soft gentle mouth. When he got the shovel he appeared to be offering it back into the grave for help to climb out. But with a tender little giggle, he brought the blade of the shovel around, bludgeoning the larynx of the man already in the grave. Then, with a pleasant little laugh, he covered the body with the fresh earth just before a nearby golfer sliced into the area. The white ball landed in the soft fresh mound of the grave. The golfer walked over, and seeing it half-buried, cursed his luck.

  "I mean it is like playing out of sand, right? I mean, is this ground under repair? Because if this is ground under repair, I get a free lift."

  "No. You don't get a free lift. It's not ground under repair."

  "You're cruel, you know," said the golfer. "You could have said it was ground under repair."

  The next day, every Dynamic News station in every Dynamic News locale reported the simple murder for robbery of three drivers for a nuclear plant, and a denial by a government agency that any uranium was missing.

  "While we deeply regret the murder/robbery of three of our drivers, we find no reason for a nuclear alarm." This from a government spokesperson.

  "But the trucks were empty, weren't they?" This from a newsperson.

  "They were empty trucks en route to the main garage in Pennsylvania."

  "But were they empty when they started out?"

  "Yes."

  "Then why were they being driven?"

  "To return them to the main garage in Pennsylvania." And the spokesperson assured the press, assured the television cameras and the world, there was nothing to worry about at this time. Everything was under control. In his office just off Wall Street, Harrison Caldwell watched the bullion market take five tons without a quiver. Then he made arrangements to sell twice as much. He had just figured out a way to perfect the gathering of uranium. When you had an infinite amount of money, nothing was impossible.

  Chapter 4

  It was a disgrace. It was an insult and humiliation almost too much to bear. But Chiun would bear it. He would bear it with dignity and in silence. Though he certainly could have borne it longer if Remo hadn't ignored the silence. For silence ignored was the most insulting if not useless of things. One might as well be a silent rock. And Chiun, Master of Sinanju, was not a rock. When he wasn't talking to someone, the victim had better know it.

  "I am silent," he said, with a haughty rise of his gray-and-gold kimono of the day.

  "I heard," said Remo. He showed his and Chiun's identification at the large cyclone fence surrounding the McKeesport, Pennsylvania, special nuclear facility. This was only one of the plants where uranium had been stolen. But three trucks destined for this plant did not arrive because their drivers had been robbed and murdered in a small New Jersey city. It sounded suspicious. Three dead men for two wallets containing less than a hundred and fifty dollars. Of course nowadays that kind of thing was as common as a rock in the forest. But there was just no place else to start. All the investigative agencies had come up with nothing. Remo wasn't sure what he could come up with, but he supposed Smitty had wanted a new fresh look.

  "I am still silent," said Chiun.

  "All right," said Remo. "I am sorry. What are you silent about?"

  Chiun turned his head away. When one was silent, one certainly wasn't going to discuss it.

  The identification specified that Remo and Chiun were nuclear engineers and they were going to rate the plant, and any plant for that matter, for efficiency. This enabled them to ask any question, no matter how stupid.

  Remo asked where the uranium was stored prior to shipment and was told it was not. All uranium had a destination before it was made hot, as they called it. Chiun touched Remo's arm.

  "I know, little father, you're silent. Look at this stuff. It's interesting. All those pipes."

  "Excuse me, sir," said a guard. "Is there something in particular you're looking at?"

  "I'm just amazed by modern technology."

  "That's not quite modern, sir. That's a men's room."

  "Right," said Remo.

  "May I see your identification?"

  The guard looked at the two glossy cards that showed vague likenesses of Remo and Chiun as nuclear engineers. The pictures could never quite identify them, but when showed, neither could they be used to prove they weren't who they said they were. The pictures had all the clarity and quality of normal passport photos. "Would you come with me, please, sir."

  "No," said Remo. He took back the card, even with the guard's hands following after it.

  "You're supposed to come with me. You can get hurt. You don't even have a radiation badge."

  "I don't need one. I can feel it."

  "Nobody can feel radiation."

  "You could if you listened to your body," said Remo. Chiun turned his head away in disgust. It was Remo's nature to attempt to explain things to any sort of fool. One could even smell the odors of cow meat coming from the breath of the guard, and Remo was talking to him about listening to his body. The absurdity of it all. Suddenly Chiun had so many reasons to keep silent that he gave up.

  "Fool," he said to Remo. "We have been reduced to speaking to guards, to little spear carriers, to people not even policemen with little square badges and no honor. Why do you waste your time talking to eaters of dead cows?"

  "I told him we didn't need radiation badges."

  "We need brains is what we need. I have trained you as an assassin and now you wander around looking for thieves. We do not look for thieves. Policemen look for thieves. Your problem is you have never worked for a real emperor."

  "Our country has a problem. This stuff can be used to make bombs that can destroy cities. Can you imagine entire cities being incinerated?"

  "Today. Of course. Everything loses its grandeur. They destroy cities without even sack or pillage. And who recognizes the assassin today? A good, not even great assassin would save millions of lives."

  "Do you know how many people were killed at Hiroshima?"

  "Not as many as the Japanese killed by hand in the rape of Nanking. The weapons are not the problems. Armies are the problems, armies not even made of soldiers anymore, but citizens. Everyone is his own assassin. What a shame this age has become. And you have taken the training I have given you and joined the general degradation of your kind," said Chiun, and began the litany of how he should have known when first he tried to teach a white that the white would revert to white ways. This he said following Remo throughout the nuclear plant, in the cadence of the Korean spoken most heavily in the northwest of that peninsula called by the Masters of Sinanju "the glory cove." For his big finish he stressed again that they would not be so degraded if Remo worked for a real emperor, not Smith the lunatic.

  As they toured the plant, the director of security, a woman in a smart suit with smart eyeglasses and a very smart manner about her walk, watched the two. Remo ignored her.

  "Oh, gracious lady, I see that you, too, suffer."

  "My name is Consuelo Bonner," said the woman. "I am director of security, and I am not a lady, I am a woman. And what are you two doing here?"

  "Shh," said Remo. "I'm thinking."

  "He does not realize your beauty, madam," said Chiun.

  "Would you shush a man?" said Consuelo Bonner. She was twenty-eight years old, and could have been a model with her flashing blue eyes and glorious pale skin with raven hair, but chose instead to be in a business where men would not order her around.

  "No. I wouldn't shush a man in your job. I would put him through a wall," said Remo.

  "You don't sound like a nuclear engineer," said Consuelo Bonner. "What is the fission rate of a neutron imbalance subjected to hyperbombardment of laser-inten
sified electron streams?"

  "A good question," said Remo.

  "Answer it or you're under arrest."

  "Seven," said Remo.

  "What?" said Consuelo Bonner. The answer was a formula.

  "Twelve," said Remo.

  "Ridiculous," said Consuelo Bonner.

  "A hundred and twelve," said Remo. He turned away from the woman and continued on down the corridors of the plant, putting the problem into perspective. If the nuclear waste were stolen, he reasoned, the thefts could not have been committed by people without protection from radiation. It really couldn't even have been heisted by people who didn't know how to move the uranium; not that much uranium, and not that consistently. Therefore it probably was someone working within the system itself, someone who normally would have access to the fuel.

  The woman was still following him. She had a walkie-talkie and was calling for assistance. Chiun smiled at the woman, telling Remo he had to learn how to handle women. One did not bruise them; one showered them with petals of distraction. He turned toward the woman, intent upon providing a gracious example.

  "The delicacy of your hands on that instrument belies its purpose," said Chiun. "You are a thousand mornings of joy and delight."

  "I am every bit as good as a man. I can do anything you can do, let me tell you that. Especially you, buddy, who won't even listen to me," she said.

  "What?" said Remo.

  "I said I am going to arrest you. I can do anything a man can do."

  "Piss out a window," said Remo, still looking for the storage room. He could recognize lavatories now. They had the big atomic-looking pipes going to them. The reactor had the small-bathroom kind of piping. He would have this facility down pat in minutes.

  Consuelo Bonner shrewdly waited until she had overwhelming force Bight guards. Four for each. "This is your last chance. This is a federally protected area. You are here under suspicious circumstances, and I must ask you to come with me. If you refuse, I must place you under arrest."

  "Piss out a window," said Remo.

  "How crude to such an elegant lady," said Chiun.

  "Arrest them," said Consuelo.

  The guards split into two teams of four, and as they were trained, each closed in a perfect diamond pattern designed to make the perpetrator helpless. Except that they closed in on themselves. Consuelo Bonner blinked. She had these men trained at the best police schools. She had seen them work out herself. She had seen one break a board with his head. They all had martial-arts experience and now they were bumping heads like babies in a playpen.

  "Move it," she snapped. "Use clubs. Anything. Guns. They are just walking away from you."

  The guards abandoned their patterns and with a yell all eight, like a vengeful herd, fell on the two walking down the hall as casually as though strolling through a meadow.

  Two of the eight were able to stand at the end of the skirmish and a third said he felt nothing. The invading pair kept on walking. Consuelo Bonner took off her eyeglasses. She would approach the elder of the pair. He, at least, was a gentleman.

  "I guess I didn't understand you. I just want to keep my plant safe."

  "From uranium being stolen," said Remo.

  "You can't prove that. This plant is as safe as if a man ran it," said Consuelo.

  "That's what I'm saying. It's a mess."

  "You don't think men are better?" said Consuelo.

  "We think we are forever denied having children," said Chiun. "So we make do with our meager awesome powers."

  Consuelo Bonner followed them down the hall. "If you are not engineers, who are you?"

  "People who may have the same interest as you," said Remo.

  "To exalt your beauty," said Chiun.

  In Korean, Remo told Chiun that this woman didn't seem receptive to that sort of flattery. Chiun answered, also in Korean, that Remo was acting too white. What would it hurt to make a poor life a little less dreary with a kind word? Chiun knew how to live without gratitude. He had learned that teaching Remo. But why should an innocent woman suffer?

  "For the last time, I'm not going to write that I am not white. I'm not going to imply that I lied to you, or that something in your teaching made me Korean. I am white. I have always been white. I will always be white. And when I write the history of Sinanju . . ."

  Chiun raised a hand. "You will write that we are nothing but hired guards and the great House of Sinanju, assassins to the world, have been reduced to servants."

  "We're saving a country."

  "What has the country ever done for you? What has the country ever taught you? What is your country? There are thousands of countries and there will be thousands more. But Sinanju is here tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ... if you don't fail us."

  "I am not marrying some fat ugly girl from Sinanju, either," said Remo.

  Now all of this was said in Korean, like machine-gun fire. Consuelo Bonner did not understand a word. But she knew it was an argument. She also judged without any difficulty that these two had as much to do with nuclear science as a pinball machine. She also knew that eight guards were useless against them, and that they were probably able to take on many more than that.

  But Consuelo Bonner had not gotten to be chief of security at a nuclear plant by taking leaps at suspicions. Women, she knew, were judged more harshly than men. She was all but certain these two men might be just what she needed to get back her fuel, to get her the credit for getting back the fuel, and for taking one more small step for her gender. To say nothing of the large one for her pocketbook.

  "I know who you are," she said. "You're not engineers. You're from one of the zillion federal agencies trying to track down the fuel. We've had them all, I think. Hasn't been made public because they don't want to panic anyone about enough fuel for dozens of bombs floating around. But I can help you find the trail of the fuel."

  Remo stopped. He looked to Chiun. Chiun looked away, still angered.

  "Okay," said Remo. "But tell me. What was the answer to your first question that gave you the hint I might not be a nuclear engineer? Was it seven? I had a hunch it was seven."

  "It's a formula. What do you want to know for?"

  "In case someone asks me again," said Remo.

  Chiun turned slowly to the young white woman encouraging Remo to be a finder of lost things. He looked at her smooth white skin and sharp Western suit. Harlot, he thought.

  "A penny for your thoughts," said Consuelo.

  Chiun smiled, and tugged Remo away from the woman.

  Harrison Caldwell felt his stomach tighten. His palms moistened and his lips went dry, and once again he felt fear. But he could not show fear. To this man he could show neither fear nor dishonesty. He was the one man you did not lie to. Nor did you use him carelessly. Shrewdly, Harrison Caldwell had kept him in reserve for only the right times, only the right missions. For as the family had said:

  "Money, without a sword, is a gift for whoever has one." Harrison Caldweli had not used him for the professor who translated the stone, nor of course for the divers. Harrison Caldwell only used Francisco Braun when it was absolutely necessary. He was the last step.

  Harrison Caldwell was one of the few men who knew how to use an assassin. One did not squander him for one's ego, nor belittle him as a hireling.

  "Treat your sword as your daughter, and you will die of old age." And by that, it was meant that one did not go to one's sword willy-nilly for every niggling problem, or even every killing. Harrison Caldwell was not a squeamish man, but Francisco Braun could turn a stomach of iron to jelly. Sometimes, since he had found him, Harrison Caldwell wondered if Francisco knew just how terrifying he was. He had found Francisco on the Barcelona waterfront. Knowing he would need a sword to attain great wealth, he had gone to the worst section of Barcelona and asked for the name of the most ferocious killer.

  Popular opinion led him to the man who ran a heroin-refining operation, known to kill his competition by breaking in their ribs and puncturing the
ir lungs, letting them die by drowning, so to speak, in the very dry streets of Barcelona. Harrison Caldwell offered one hundred thousand dollars to the man who killed him. Caldwell's explanation was that he was seeking revenge for a relative who had died through drugs. When one offered a hundred thousand dollars, one did not need a very good explanation.

  Though Barcelona's streets became littered with still men and caved chests, still they came from around the world. Whites, blacks, yellows came and died in the streets of Barcelona. Harrison Caldwell himself read about these things safely from a Paris hotel suite.

  Then, after three weeks of carnage, the drug dealer was found in bed with his stomach ever so neatly fricasseed, and a gentle blond man came to the hotel asking for his money. At first, Caldwell could not believe such a pretty young man could have been the killer. The concierge downstairs thought him a male prostitute, a homosexual prostitute, such was the gentleness of the features. But something about the man's ease told Harrison Caldwell this pretty young man had done the job.

  "I promised a hundred thousand dollars," Caldwell said. "I lied. It is four hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand dollars now, and three hundred thousand dollars to come in a short time: in gold."

  "Why three hundred thousand dollars?" said the young man.

  "Because you will never work for anyone else again. You are my sword."

  He waited while the young man thought this over. Caldwell knew that someone who could kill with this ferocity just might kill him for daring to say such a thing. But if he said yes, Harrison Caldwell would have his sword.

  "Yes," said Francisco Braun. As soon as Harrison Caldwell discovered that uranium was the missing element, his sword had work. And precise work too. He could take out a man's eyes as easily as he could help someone "in his sleep." Francisco Braun could kill anywhere and at any time, and perfectly. Just the day before, as the gold had come finally pouring out of its destiny, Francisco Braun had killed the one link between the uranium trucks and his master. It was Francisco's idea to hire a thug to do the killing and then have him picked up. He was a murdering genius and though Francisco talked little about himself, what Caldwell had pieced together of his background confirmed that killing came naturally to Braun. He was the grandson of a Nazi war criminal who had fled to Uruguay and had joined the local police. Young Francisco, too, had joined the police, forming a squad of such ferocity that they made terrorists look pale. And then strangely one day, Francisco switched to the urban guerrilla army. And his explanation was: