Voodoo Die td-33

by Warren Murphy

  He didn't even wait. He knew he had a partner with a lead pipe, because that's what his partner was ready to use while the lights were on.

  They closed in on the guy at the same time. It was beautiful, double beautiful. Wham. He should have collapsed. But he didn't.

  He hardly moved. You could feel him not move. You could make out that your partner fell onto the sidewalk like he was dropped off a roof. And then the

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  guy spoke to you very softly and he had your hand in his and you couldn't even let go of the knife. And he punctured your belly and you slammed desperately at your own hand trying to get the knife out of it so it wouldn't tear your insides out, but it felt like someone had taped your belly button to the heating coil of an electric stove and that burn kept going up and you couldn't let go.

  If you could have, you would have bitten your hand off at the wrist just to let go.

  It hurt that bad.

  When the heart went, when the muscle was pierced and his blood flowed out of his stomach and now very fast out, all over the place, and he finally was able to let go of the knife because the guy was walking on up the street, then it dawned on the young man, in the final clarity of the last moment of life, even a seventeen-year-old life, that this guy he had planned to stick had snuffed out his life without missing one slow shuffling step.

  The young man's whole life was not even a missed step in the evening of that strange guy who ate the flower.

  The city was dark and Remo moved on. There was some blood on his left thumb and he flicked it off.

  The problem with people in the city, he knew, was that darkness, relying on your senses instead of mechanical means to produce artificial daylight, was the natural way. And suddenly people who did not even breathe properly found themselves having to use muscles they had never used before, atrophied muscles like those used to hear and see and feel.

  He himself had been trained with great pain and great wisdom to learn how to revive the dormant skills of man, the talents that had once made man

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  competitive with the wild animals but now had turned this new species into walking corpses. The spear itself had made the human animal dependent on an outside thing, and not until the dawn of history in a fishing village on the west Korea bay did any man regain the pace and skill that reawakened what man could be.

  The skill was called Sinanju, after the village in which it was created.

  Only the Masters of Sinanju knew these techniques.

  Only one white man had ever been so honored.

  And that man was Remo and now in one of the great cities of his civilization the lights went out. And he was troubled.

  Not because people were as people had been since before Babylon, but because he was now different.

  And what had he done with his life? When he had agreed to undergo training, to serve an organization that would enable his country to survive, he thought there was a thing-justice-that he was working for.

  And that changed as he became more like the Master of Sinanju who trained him. For then the perfection of being part of the House of Sinanju, the greatest assassins in all history, was enough. The doing of what you did was its very purpose. And one morning he awoke and he didn't believe that at all.

  There was a right and there was a wrong and what was Remo doing that was right?

  Nothing, he told himself. He moved on up to Harlem, walking slowly and thinking. Mobs had begun to loot and burn, and he came to the edge of one delirious crowd and saw it straining at an iron fence that shielded windows.

  The sign behind the windows read: "Down Home Frozen Ribs."

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  It was obviously a black manufacturing plant. Not a big one either.

  "Get 'im. Get 'im," yelled a woman and she was not yelling at Remo. Something up in front of the crowd was struggling against the mob, trying to keep it from breaking through the fence.

  "Get the uppity nigger. Get the high-pants nigger. Get the uppity nigger," the woman yelled again. She had a quart bottle of gin in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.

  If the crowd had not been black, Remo would have sworn it was made up of the Ku Klux Klan. Remo did not understand the hate. But he knew someone was struggling for what he had built. And that was worth protecting.

  Remo moved, edging through bodies like a bowling ball through pins, glancing his own force against the stationary mass of those in front. The movement itself was like an unbroken, uninterrupted run and there was a shotgun pointing at his belly, and the man in front of the iron gate was black, and his finger was squeezing on the trigger as Remo flipped up the barrel and the blast went off above his head.

  The mob hushed for a moment. Someone up front tried to run away. But when they saw the shot had been fired harmlessly and that the man wasn't going to kill, they charged again.

  But the black man turned the barrel around and using the stock of the gun like the end of a club swung at Remo and then the crowd.

  Remo avoided the wild slow arch of the gun butt, then worked the edge of the crowd toward the middle, until the man realized Remo was on his side. Then Remo took the center. In a few moments, he

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  had a small barrier made of groaning people in front of the fenced factory front.

  The crowd stopped pressing forward. They called to others passing by to get the white man they had trapped there. But there was too much fun out in the streets, where the only credit card you needed was a hammer and friends to help you tear away any protection in front of anything. Besides, this white man had a way of hurting people, so they turned and ran.

  Remo stayed the night with the man, who had come from Jackson, Mississippi, as a little boy, whose father had worked as a janitor in a large office. The man had gotten a job in the post office and his wife worked and his two sons worked and they had all put their money into this small meat plant. Remo and the man stood out front and watched other shops go.

  "Ah guess that's why I stayed here out 'n front wif a gun," the man said. "Mah sons are off buyin' direck from some farms in Jersey and ah didn't wan' to face them sayin' everything is gone. Death'd be easier than seein' this here go. It's our lives. That why I stayed. Why did you help?"

  "Because I'm lucky," Remo said.

  "Ah don' unnerstand."

  This is a good thing. This is a very good thing I do here tonight. I haven't done a good thing in a long while. It feels good. I'm lucky."

  "That's pretty dangerous do-goodin'," said the man. "Ah almost shot you and ah almost banged you upside the haid with my shotgun, and if ah didn't get you, them mobs would. They's dangerous."

  "Nah," said Remo. "They're garbage." He waved at the running crowds, laughing and screaming, dropping looted dresses from overladen arms.

  "Even garbage can kill. You can get smothered by

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  garbage. And you move slow, too. Ah never saw no one fight like that."

  "No reason you should have," Remo said.

  "What that fightin called?"

  "It's a long story," Remo said.

  "It ain' like karate. And it ain' like tae kwan do. Mah sons taught me that, for when I alone in the factory. You somethin' like that, but it ain' the same."

  "I know," Remo said. "It only looks slow but it's really faster, what I do."

  "It like a dance, but you very still about it."

  "That's a good description. It is a dance, in a way. Your partner is your target. It's like you will do whatever you have to do and your partner is dead from the beginning. He sort of asks you to kill him and helps you do it. It's the unity of things." Remo was delighted at his own explanation, but the man looked puzzled and Remo knew he could never tell him what Sinanju was.

  How do you explain to the whole world that it was, from its very first breaths, breathing wrong and living wrong? How did you explain that there was another way to live? And how did you explain to someone that you had been living that way and after more than ten years of it, you had
decided it wasn't enough? There was more to life than breathing right and moving right.

  When the sun came up red and glinted on the broken glass in the streets, when the police finally decided the streets were safe enough to return to duty, Remo left the man and never told him his name.

  Without electricity, New York City was dead. Shows did not open and the arteries of the city's work force, the subway system, was a corpse of stopped trains waiting for the current of Me.

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  It was hot and it felt like New York City had gone away for the day. Even Central Park was empty. Remo dawdled by the pond and when he got back to the Plaza Hotel it was noon. But he did not enter. He was stopped outside by a voice.

  "Where have you been?" came the high squeaky voice.

  "Nowhere," said Remo. "You are late."

  "How can I be late? I never said when I'd be back at the hotel."

  "Woe be to the fool that would depend on you," said Chiun, Master of Sinanju, folding his long fingernails contemptuously into his golden morning kimono. "Woe be unto the fool that has given you the wisdom of Sinanju and, in return for this supreme knowledge, gets white lip. Thank you, no thank you, for nothing." "I was thinking, Little Father," said Remo. "Why bother to explain to a fool?" said Chiun. His skin was parchment yellow and his wisps of white beard and tufts of thin white hair around the borders of his skull quivered with the anger that was in him.

  The skin was wrinkled and the lips were tight He avoided looking at Remo. One might think this was a frail thin old man, but if one should test it out too thoroughly upon this Master of Sinanju, he would do no more testing on anyone ever.

  "Okay, if you're not interested," Remo said. "I am interested. I am interested in how one can pour a lifetime into an ingrate who does not even say where he goes or what he does or why he does it. I am interested in why a venerable, disciplined, wise, kind leader of his community would squander the treasure of wisdom that is Sinanju on someone who blows about like a dried leaf."

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  "All right. I was out last night because I had to think "

  "Quiet. We don't have time. We are to go on a plane to Washington. We are now free of our bonds and we can work for a real emperor. You have never known this. It is far better than Smith, who I never understood. An insane emperor is like a wound to his personal assassin. We have been working with wounds, Remo. Now we are off."

  With a flutter of his long fingernails, Chiun waved at bellboys. Fourteen ornately lacquered trunks stood on the white steps of the Plaza, partially blocking one of the entrances. Remo wondered how Chiun had gotten the bellboys to carry the heavy trunks down fourteen flights of stairs. When he saw one burly porter wince in fear as he passed Chiun, carrying a trunk to a cab, Remo knew. Chiun had that wonderful way of convincing people to help a poor little old man. It was called a death threat.

  Two cabs were needed to go to the airport.

  "What's going on?" Remo asked. He knew that Chiun never quite understood the organization or Dr. Harold Smith, who ran it. To Chiun, it did not make sense to have an assassin and then keep it secret. He had told Remo, if you make known your ability to kill your enemies, you will find yourself with very few enemies. But Smith did not listen.

  And even worse, Smith never used Remo and Chiun "effectively," according to Chiun. "Effectively" meant for Smith to ask Chiun to remove the current President so Smith could declare himself emperor. Or king.

  And of course, at the same time he would proclaim the House of Sinanju official assassins to the nation and the Presidency. Chiun had it all worked out. He

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  had seen the recent American inauguration ceremony on television. Smith, who ran CURE and would under Chiun's plan run the country, would walk five paces ahead of Chiun in the parade and Chiun would wear his red kimono with the gold-threaded tana leaves. When Chiun told Smith how it would be, Smith said:

  "Never."

  "The green kimono, then, with the black swans."

  "Never. Never."

  "Gold is for mornings. Your inaugurations are afternoons," Chiun had explained reasonably.

  "I will never assassinate our President. I don't want to be President. I serve the President. I serve the nation. I want to help him," Smith had said.

  "We don't miss, like some of the amateurs walking around your streets," Chiun had replied. "You have nothing to fear. We can put you on your President's throne this very week. And our rates will be virtually the same. This is a big country with a turbulent, rebellious population. We might have to go a mite higher. But you would never miss it. Your cities alone are bigger than most countries."

  "No," Smith had said. "I don't even want to discuss it."

  Remo had interceded. "You're never going to convince Chiun that you are not a minor emperor who should be plotting against the big emperor, now that you have the House of Sinanju on your side. You're never going to convince him that there is only one form of government, with many different names like democracy and communism and monarchy. He thinks it's one man on top and most everyone else trying to take it away from him."

  The conversation had all taken place two days ago in the waiting room of Newark Airport.

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  "And what do you think, Remo?" Smith asked. "I think I am not going to Baqia." "May I know why?" asked Smith. He was a gaunt, thin-lipped man and the years had not worn well on him. He was still in his middle age, but he already looked old.

  "Yeah," said Remo. "I don't care what happens to the Caribbean. I don't care who kills who. All I know is that everything I've ever done for this outfit hasn't made two spits' difference in a rainstorm. We were supposed to make the Constitution work outside the Constitution, give it that extra little edge. Well, the country's become a garbage can and I don't see how one more corpse is going to help it, one way or another, and so it's no to Baqia. I don't care who is able to do what or which agency can't do what. No."

  And Chiun had nodded affirmation to this. "However," added Chiun to Smith, "if you should change your mind about becoming emperor, I am sure Remo might be persuaded how good life can be working for a real emperor."

  "I'm not going to Baqia," Remo said again. "He'll go if you sit in the White House throne," said Chiun.

  And that had been that. Smith had been shaken. Chiun had been angry because, as he said, Remo never understood the business aspects of assassinry and never listened when Chiun tried to explain, either.

  Now, if Remo could believe what he was hearing in the cab on the way to LaGuardia Airport, Chiun had spoken personally to the President of the United States, who had invited him down for a visit.

  "That's impossible," Remo said. "We work for an organization that doesn't exist. Its purpose is not to

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  exist. It's secret," Remo whispered harshly. "They are not proud in this country of employing assassins."

  "Not until now. But nations grow," said Chiun.

  "You mean we're supposed to walk right in the front door of the White House?" asked Remo.

  "Not exactly," said Chiun.

  "Aha. I thought so."

  "But we will be received by the President himself."

  "Ridiculous," said Remo. They had met the President once before, to show him how vulnerable the White House was to attack, that it was as open as a massage parlor to people who had made lifetime studies of walls and doors and windows. Remo had gone back to reinforce the lesson. The President hadn't listened and Chiun had met the President again when he was saving his life from a killer. Chiun had not waited for thanks.

  That night, Chiun's bulky baggage checked at the Washington Hilton, they made their way into the White House and were in the oval office by 10:33 P.M., the time Chiun said the President had specified.

  The two waited in the dark office.

  "I feel stupid," Remo said. "We're going to sit here until morning and then scare the ditfrimmy out of some cleaning woman. Or whatever they use to straighten out an ultrasecure office."

  "Di
tfrimmy?" asked Chiun. "I have never heard of ditfrimmy."

  "I made it up. It's a made-up word. I make up words sometimes."

  "So do most babies," said Chiun with that calm feeling of having helped his student realize his proper place in relationship to the Master of Sinanju, who now waited in the American emperor's throne room, as Chiun's ancestors had waited in throne rooms for cen-

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  turies, to assure pharaoh or king or emperor or President that this enemy or that would breathe his last, provided proper tribute was guaranteed to the little village of Sinanju on the west Korean bay.

  The door opened. A crack of light was in the room. Someone just otitside the door spoke.

  "Guaranteed, Mr. President, sir. Impossible, sir, for anyone to get into your oval office, sir, without us finding out, sir. You're in a tight seal, if I may say so, sir."

  "Thank you," answered the soft Southern voice.

  And the President entered his office, shut the door behind himself, and personally turned on the lights.

  ''Hello," he said.

  "Greetings to the heir of Washington and Lincoln and Roosevelt," intoned Chiun, rising, then bowing low. "Hail to the triumphant successor of Rutherford B. Hayes and Millard Fillmore. Of the redoubtable James K. Polk and Grover Cleveland. Of the beneficent James Madison and Calvin Coolidge the Great."

  "Thank you," said the President with a small embarrassed smile. But Chiun was not finished.

  "Of Ulysses Grant the Wise, of the handsome Andrew Johnson. Woodrow Wilson the Triumphant and Hoover the Magnificent. To say nothing of Andrew Jackson . . ."

  "Thank you," said the President.

  "Of William McKinley," said Chiun, who had read books about the new American land and like so many travelers found that the descriptions did not fit the people. "A happy robust people," had said the old Korean history of the world. It gave the United States a quarter of a page in a three-thousand-page volume, the first two-hundred-eighty pages of which were the

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  definitive work on the early dynasties o£ the Korean peninsula and their effect on the world.

  "Of Grover Cleveland again," Chiun said with a delighted squeak.