The Last Alchemist td-64

by Warren Murphy

  "He's not there. I don't know how I know but he's not there. Believe me, he's not there. Okay?" said Remo. And he didn't know how he knew. He knew that others couldn't sense when someone was in a room behind a door. But he could no more tell her how he knew than he could tell her how light worked.

  "Let me explain," said Chiun. "We are all part of a being. We only think we are disconnected because our feet are not rooted in the earth. But we are all connected. Some people have obliterated the sense of that connection but Remo and the room from which the man has left are joined in being."

  "I prefer 'I dunno,' " said Consuelo.

  "You people part of some cult?" asked the policeman.

  "Who are these lunatics?" asked Chiun.

  "Normal Americans," said Remo.

  "That explains it," said Chiun.

  James Brewster, of course, was not in the room.

  He was at the airport with a sudden good friend. A man who looked Swedish and spoke as though he were Spanish. James Brewster never trusted good luck. But this good luck came when he couldn't afford not to trust.

  He had sat trembling on a couch, his expensive lawyer having abandoned him, facing jail, disgrace, humiliation, cursing himself for ever thinking he could have gotten away with it.

  When the phone began to ring he did not answer it.

  "It's here. It's come apart. I'm done for. It. That's it. It." He poured himself a tumbler of Scotch.

  "I took a chance. I lost. Done for."

  There was a knock on the door. He didn't answer it. Let the police get him. He didn't care. A man's voice with a Spanish accent came through the door. It begged to be let in. It begged to save him.

  "It's no use," sobbed James Brewster. Done. It was all over.

  "You're a fool. You could be rich and live with servants beyond your wildest dreams."

  "That's how I got into this pickle," said Brewster. He looked at the wall. Better get used to looking at a wall for the rest of your life, he told himself.

  "You took a chance. You won. You will win even more."

  "I want to go home."

  "To McKeesport, Pennsylvania?"

  James Brewster thought about that a moment. Then he opened the door.

  He expected a Spaniard. But an incredibly beautiful blond man in a white suit stood in the doorway. He wore a dark blue shirt and a single gold chain under it, hiding a medallion of sorts.

  "My name is Francisco. I have come to keep you out of jail. To give you an even richer, more splendid life than you have ever known before."

  James Brewster stood in the doorway waiting. He tapped his foot, waiting.

  "What are you waiting for?" asked Braun.

  "To wake up," said Brewster. "This is a bad dream."

  Francisco Braun slapped him across the face.

  "Okay," said Brewster, his left cheek stinging like a swarm of bees had just struck him. "Awake. I'm awake."

  "You are going to go to jail if you don't listen to me," said Braun.

  "Very awake," said Brewster. "Really awake."

  "But I can give you wealth and luxury beyond your wildest dreams."

  "Asleep again. Dreaming," said Brewster. "All done. Life is over."

  "I will help you get away. You can live in hiding for the rest of your life," said Braun.

  "Waking up."

  "Fly to Brazil. No one can arrest you in Brazil. They do not have an extradition treaty with anyone. Many criminals live a high wonderful life in Rio. You have no doubt, senor, heard of wonderful Rio."

  "Almost everything I have is in this condominium."

  "I will buy it."

  "Well, considering land values, I think I really want to hold on to it a little longer. This isn't the right time to sell."

  "Are you joking, senor? You must sell. Or go to jail."

  "I didn't want you to think you could get this for a bargain price. No one should ever sell real estate in desperation."

  "I will give you in gold whatever you think it is worth."

  James Brewster named a price that would have purchased half the town. Considering the town was La Jolla, it was higher than the net worth of two-thirds of the members of the United Nations.

  They settled on a minuscule fraction. A million dollars in gold. It came to slightly over two hundred pounds. In two valises. For which he paid extra in baggage charges at the airport.

  "I know Brazil. It is a beautiful country," said Braun.

  "But you must know how to handle people." Braun rubbed his fingers together. Bribes were his kind of psychology.

  Brewster understood bribes. That was how he got here.

  "You must know how to protect yourself," said Braun. "What if they follow your trail?"

  "But you said they couldn't extradite me."

  "Ah, that is the problem with your situation. You see, you helped steal uranium."

  "Shhhh," said Brewster. He looked around the airport.

  "No one cares. This is a busy airport. Listen. You must know how to lose a tail, even if it comes from a government seeking revenge for your helping to steal atomic materials."

  "Yes. Yes. Lose a tail. Lose a tail," said Brewster.

  "When you get to Rio, you hire a boat to go up the Amazon. And use your correct name."

  "I hate jungles."

  "I don't blame you. That is why James Brewster will go up the Amazon but Arnold Diaz will live in luxury in another condominium. And for a mere quarter of a million dollars you will have space. All the space you want."

  "Only a quarter of a million?"

  "And you can hire servants for three dollars a week. Beautiful women will fall at your feet for ten dollars American."

  "How much for making love? I'm not into feet," said Brewster.

  "Whatever you want for ten dollars, all right? But don't forget to register for the trip up the Amazon. I have written down this name of a tour guide. Use him."

  "Why him?"

  "Because I tell you to. He can be trusted to take your money and take you nowhere."

  "I don't have to leave America for that," said Brewster.

  "It is important that he take you nowhere. These things are not for you to understand. And wear this," said Francisco Braun, giving Brewster a small oblong gold bar with a bullion stamp impressed into it. "It will show your gratitude. It is a symbol I have come to love and serve. You too may be asked to serve one day for all that we have done for you."

  "For what you have just done, I would wear it on my you-know-what," said Brewster.

  "The chain around your neck will do," said Braun. On the plane, comfortably seated in first class all the way to Rio, James Brewster looked at the little gold bar. It had an apothecary jar inscribed on it. With his first rum punch, he snapped the bar onto his gold chain, and rode the rest of the way to safety in absolute comfort dreaming of luxury for the rest of his life.

  Consuelo Bonner did not tell Remo and Chiun how she knew James Brewster had fled to Rio. She knew and that was it.

  "Policework. Straight-cut detection. You don't tell me how you know people aren't in rooms behind locked doors, and I don't tell you how I track down people."

  "It would help if we knew," said Remo. "Maybe we could help you do things faster."

  "Just keep me alive. That's all I want from you," said Consuelo. "If you do that, we can find out who is bribing James Brewster, and stop this uranium problem."

  She noticed neither Chiun nor Remo ate on the many-hour flight to Rio. She also noticed neither of them seemed to be bothered by the oppressively hot Brazilian weather. When they were briefly out of sight, she peeked at the note she had written down back in the States when she had spoken to Braun. It had the address in Rio of a tour guide.

  When they returned, Consuelo said:

  "Given that a fleeing man chose a country without an extradition treaty with the United States, where would he go once he was in Brazil? Either of you two men figure that out?"

  "Probably to the same sort of luxury condo he enjoyed back
in the States," said Remo.

  "No," said Consuelo. "The amateur mind might think that. I think he was panicked. I think I saw a frightened, terrified man back in La Jolla. I think our dispatcher who ships uranium to an accomplice and flees to Brazil keeps on fleeing. I would bet he has run up the Amazon."

  "Only if you find someone who would bet with you," said Remo. "Are you sure he is in Brazil?"

  "Yes," said Consuelo. She loosened the top button of her blouse. Her clothes felt like wet sacks stuck to her body. Street urchins seemed to grow out of the sidewalks. None of the travel brochures ever showed so many unwashed young people. They featured the beaches. Nor did they mention the smells of garbage. They gave you twilight photos of the city skyline. Maybe they could build high-rises in Rio but they could not collect garbage.

  And the people. So many people. And it seemed that half of them were tour guides; most of them wanted to take them to nightclubs.

  "We want the Amazon. We are looking for someone who has gone up the Amazon."

  "To Brasilia?" asked each guide. That was the name of the new capital that the government wanted people to populate. There were state-paid bonuses for moving there. Consuela was sure that there were also bonuses for taking tourists there.

  "No. Into the jungle."

  "There is much jungle in Brazil. Most of it is jungle. I have yet to have anyone ask to visit it."

  "I am looking for someone who has."

  "No esta here, beautiful young woman."

  Consuela waited for either Remo or Chiun to say they would never find the right guide, that the trail was lost, that she was a fool, that she was incapable of making a right decision because she was a woman. But by noon when Consuelo was hot, tired, and disappointed that neither of her companions accused her of feminine frailty, she gave up and headed right for the name she had taken down back in the States.

  The guide was in a hotel. And he remembered a James Brewster. The man seemed nervous. He left the day before on a trip up the Amazon. The guide pointed to a map of Brazil. It was like a large peculiarly shaped pear. The green represented jungle. The dots represented civilization. The pear had very few dots. A thin dark line ran hundreds of miles into the green. That was the Amazon.

  "He took our main boat but we can get another," said the guide. He spoke English. Much business was done in English, though the main language of the country was Portuguese.

  Consuelo reserved the boat.

  "Even if you find him," asked Remo, "why should he tell you anything?"

  "Because I'll promise not to follow him anymore if he tells me who paid him. You and I are after the same thing," she said.

  "No we're not," said Remo.

  "What are you after?" she asked.

  "Honestly, I don't know. I just keep doing my job, and hoping someday I'll figure it out."

  "I have already figured it out," said Chiun. "Your purpose in life is to make mine miserable."

  "You don't have to stay. You don't have to come with me."

  "It is always nice to feel welcome," said Chiun.

  The Master of Sinanju did not like South America. Not only did it bear little resemblance to the modern travel brochures but it was unrecognizable from the accounts given in Chiun's histories. The Masters of Sinanju had been here before. They had served both of the great South American empires, the Mayan and Incan, and were paid well for their services. But since the Spanish and Portuguese had moved into the neighborhood, nothing was the same.

  What had been great cities were now slums or areas overgrown by the jungle that had reclaimed terraces and parapets. Where gold-clad emperors had walked, monkeys now chirped in trees that grew from crevices in what had once been royal walkways.

  The place, as Chiun commented on the way up to the Amazon, had become a jungle.

  Consuelo, who was part Spanish, wanted to know the history of South America. Her mother's family had come from Chile.

  "The tales of the Masters are only for other Masters," said Chiun.

  "You should be grateful for that," said Remo.

  "What can one do with a son who despises the family history?"

  "Is he your son? He doesn't look Oriental," said Consuelo.

  Their boat chugged through swarms of flies hovering around the mud-brown river that seemed to go on forever. The flies landed only on the guide, Consuelo, and the sailors.

  Remo and Chiun seemed immune.

  "He denies any possibility of Oriental blood," said Chiun. "I have to live with that."

  "That's awful," said Consuelo. "You shouldn't be ashamed of what you are."

  "I'm not," said Remo.

  "Then why do you hide your Koreanness?" she asked. "I don't hide that I am part Hispanic. No one should be ashamed of who he is."

  "He's ashamed that I'm white," said Remo, "if you want to know the truth."

  "Oh," said Consuelo.

  "Oh," said Remo.

  "I'm sorry," said Consuelo.

  The boat turned into a tributary, and the crew became nervous. The guide did not. Remo picked up little comments about something called the "Giri."

  The guide said it was nothing to worry about. There were no more Giri near here. They were less than fifty miles from Rio. Would poor pitiful savages remain near Rio?

  Remo checked the map. On the map, everything outlying Rio was built up but the dark green patch and the brown line they were traveling on. All it said was "Giri."

  "What is Giri?" Consuelo asked a crew member when the guide had gone into the cabin to briefly escape the bugs. The Amazon and tributaries had bugs that feasted on normal insect repellent.

  "Bad," said a crew member.

  "What's bad about it?"

  "Them," said the crew member. And then, as though even the sky might be listening, he whispered, fearful even to mention the name.

  "Giri all around here. Bad. Bad." He made a motion with his hands about the size of a very large cantaloupe; then he made his hands smaller, to the size of a lemon. "Heads. Take heads. Small."

  "Headhunters. The Giri are headhunters," said Consuelo.

  "Shhh," said the man. He looked to the thick foliage on the banks and crossed himself. Consuelo went directly to Remo and Chiun to warn them.

  "Not Giri," said Chiun. "Anxitlgiri."

  ''You know them?" asked Consuelo.

  "Those who know their past respect the past of others," said Chiun. The warm winds rustled his pale yellow kimono. He looked to Remo. Remo did not look back. He was watching the bugs. Any kind of bugs. Intently.

  "He knows them," said Consuelo. "Will you listen to him?"

  "You don't understand," said Remo. "He doesn't know them. What Sinanju remembers is who pays the bills. We probably did a hit for them, a half-dozen centuries ago or so. Don't even ask. He doesn't know."

  "My own son," said Chiun.

  "You poor man. What a beast he is."

  "That's all right," said Chiun.

  "I am sorry. I misjudged you at first because you made a sexist remark. I'm sorry. I think you are a wonderful person. And I think your son is an ingrate."

  "They're still headhunters," said Remo, now looking at the riverbank. He had seen them. And they were following the boat. He was just waiting for the first arrow as Chiun described the Anxitlgiri: they were a happy people, decent, honest, and loving, with perhaps some tribal customs that would not seem familiar to whites.

  Francisco Braun knew them only as Giri. He had bought heads from them before. They were dishonest and deceitful as well as vicious. But they loved gold. They loved to melt it and then pour it over favorite things, for decoration. Some of those favorite things happened to be captives whom they made slaves.

  The Giri welcomed missionaries. They liked to eat their livers. A road crew, with the Brazilian army there to protect them, tried to build a highway through Giri territory. Their whitened bones ended up as hair ornaments for the Giri women.

  Francisco Braun knew that one day he'd find a use for people this vicious and untrustwo
rthy. That day in La Jolla, California, when he found that the pair could not be surprised from even a great distance out at sea, was the day he found the Giri's niche.

  What Francisco knew he needed was a distraction. And the finest distraction in the world was a Giri warrior. While the pair were fighting against the poisoned arrows and spears of the Giri, Francisco would put them away.

  The question was how to get two men and one woman down to a miserable patch of jungle.

  The answer was James Brewster, the man he knew they would follow. And the vehicle was the woman who was chasing him, Consuelo Bonner. She trusted Francisco. And even if she did not trust, Francisco trusted the fact that her desire for him was strong enough to overcome any wariness.

  That was the way he routinely made use of her kind.

  Knowing they would follow, he had come down the day before and gone through the nauseating ritual of buying the Giri. The bugs had turned his fair skin into a painful red mottle. Even the repellent burned now.

  Carefully he had laid out a small pile of gold at the edge of the jungle and sat down. This showed the Giri they could kill him anytime. It also indicated that the gold was a gift. If that was all there was to it, these ugly little men with haircuts like upside-down bowls would kill him as soon as eat a snack.

  But Braun knew their minds. Within a half-hour the little men with their bows and arrows, wearing bones in their noses, were poking around his clearing. The first one there took the gold. The second one there took the gold from the first one. The third and fourth took it from the second. Four of them were dead and rotting in the jungle before anyone thought to speak to him.

  In Portuguese, he told them there was a great deal of gold to be had. Much more than the small pile he gave them today. He said he would pay this gold for whatever they could pillage from three people who would be coming up the Giri tributary very soon. They would come on a boat. One would be a yellow man, one a white man, and one a white woman.

  Who, they asked in broken Portuguese, would get the liver and the heads of the people?

  He said they could keep them. He just wanted what the people had and, in exchange, he would pay ten times the amount of gold he offered as a mere gift.