Last Call td-35

by Warren Murphy

  Anatoly Duvicevski sat next to Karbenko, took a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his well-cut single-breasted suit, and mopped the sweat from his brow.

  "You aren't exactly difficult to spot in that costume, Karbenko," said Duvicevski. He made no effort to hide the disapproval in his voice.

  "The fellow down to the right, reading the newspaper. He's one of them. There's another in the telephone booth at the end of the bridge to the

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  left," Karbenko said. "The one you passed without noticing."

  Duvicevski glanced left and right.

  "So the Americans know we're meeting," he said.

  "But of course they know we're meeting, Comrade," Karbenko said. He drawled the "comrade" so it sounded like "pardner." "If the Americans can't hold a secret meeting in Washington, why should we be able to? It comes down to the fact that this is a nice day and this is a pretty spot for a meeting. The air is fresh and the birds are singing. Should we meet in a stuffy office somewhere and inhale each other's cigar smoke? And for what purpose? Because they will still know that we met."

  Duvicevski grunted. Karbenko reassured him by clapping a large bony hand on his knee.

  "So what happened?" he asked the still-sweating ambassador whose face had broken out in a second round of sweat.

  "I just left the President. He explained Project Omega to me."

  "Explain it to me," said Karbenko.

  "It is a Doomsday plan that the Americans thought of in the fifties. It was supposed to go into action if they lost an atomic war but it has gone into action now and they do not know how to stop it."

  "We have two diplomats dead," Karbenko said. "How many more targets are there ?"

  "Just two," said Duvicevski. He looked at the Russian spy with narrowed eyes. "The ambassador to England and the premier."

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  Karbenko whistled. "You have already so advised the Kremlin ?"

  "Of course," said Duvicevski. "The premier is under special security guard. And all types of extra personnel have been assigned to protect the ambassador in London."

  "How has the Kremlin received this news?" Karbenko asked.

  "All our forces around the world are being put on standby, for a full combat alert. I understand there is now the highest level strategy meetings going on to determine whether or not to publicly blame the United States for these two dead ambassadors."

  "What do you think?"

  "I think if anything happens to our premier, some hothead in the Kremlin will push the button that will begin World War III. If that happens, you and I will be dead here in Washington, Karbenko."

  "Did the President say anything else?"

  "He offered us the use of some 'special personnel' he called them, to protect the premier and the ambassador. Of course, I turned him down. I assured him we could protect our people ourselves."

  Karbenko thought for a moment.

  "What kind of special personnel?" he asked.

  "He did not say."

  The two men sat silently, staring out over the bridge railing at the greasy waters of the Potomac. It was typical of what was wrong, and right, with America, Karbenko thought. A beautiful natural gem of a river that had been turned into a garbage dump and an oil slick because no

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  one had thought to protect it. And now, it was finally being reclaimed by a massive expenditure of time and effort and money. No other civilized country in the world would have let the river get so bad. And no other country in the world, faced with so bad and dying a river, could have been able to mount the effort and the resources to reclaim it. America was a land of violent pendulum swings and much of the national energy was spent correcting excessive movements in one direction or another.

  "Do you believe him ?" Karbenko finally asked.

  "Do you take me for a fool? Of course not. Who would believe so childish a story?"

  "I do," said Karbenko,

  The sweating little egg of a man turned toward .the tall raw-boned Soviet spy.

  "You aren't serious, Vassily."

  "Look at it for a moment. If they just wanted to knock off some of our ambassadors, would they have used people we could trace to the CIA? People who've been drawing CIA money for twenty years? There are mercenaries all over the world that anybody could hire for such jobs. And no one would be the wiser. No. The story is too preposterous not to be true."

  Duvicevski popped a cough drop into his mouth.

  "You believe the President?" he asked.

  "Yes," said Karbenko. He smiled. "Didn't he once say he'd never lie to us ?"

  "He didn't mean us," said Duvicevski.

  "I know. But I believe him anyway. And I believe Admiral Stantington when he says he knows

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  nothing about this Project Omega. He knows nothing about anything. God must really love the Americans."

  "There is no god," said Duvicevski.

  "Our system makes one believe that. The Americans' survival makes one doubt it. By what else but godly intervention could you explain a country that never learns anything but survives anyway?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "When those terrorists kidnaped and killed that politician in Europe last year, do you know why the police and secret police couldn't find them?"

  "No."

  "Because the government had been under so much pressure from the left about civil liberties that it had destroyed all its intelligence files. So when the terrorists struck, no one was able to find them. And in New York City a few years ago, there was a tavern bombed by terrorists. A half-dozen people killed. You know why the bombers were never found ?"

  "Why?" asked Duvicevski.

  "Because the New York City police had destroyed all their intelligence files on terrorists because keeping them violated people's civil rights. So killers went loose."

  "What has that got to do with anything?"

  "Maybe nothing," said Karbenko. "Maybe everything. America never learns. There are so many examples of what bad intelligence or no intelligence can do and still this country panders to the so-called civil rights of people who would

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  destroy the country itself. Stantington is destroying1 the CIA and the idiot thinks that he is serving America by doing it. That's why I say God must be on America's side. No other country could act so stupidly and survive."

  "They are doing our work for us," Duvicevski said.

  "No, they're not," said Karbenko. "Time will do our work for us. Given enough time, our system will prevail. All these lunatics like Stantington are doing is creating an unstable world. I know we will conquer a stable world. But an unstable world ... it may one day be ruled by the kangaroos."

  Duvicevski pondered this a while before he said, "So you believe the President and Stantington."

  "Yes," said Karbenko. "They are telling the truth as they know it. But the whole story is still a fabric of lies."

  "What?"

  "There is a man alive now who devised this Project Omega. He did it twenty years ago. Now you tell me how this man devised this program twenty years ago and just now, when it goes into effect, the targets just happen to be our current premier and our current ambassadors to London and Rome and Paris? How did he know twenty years ago who would be our premier ? Or our ambassadors? This man knows more than he tells and I do not believe him when he says that he does not know who the assassins are."

  "Do you know who this man is?" asked Duvicevski.

  "Yes."

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  "And what do you plan to do?" the ambassador asked.

  "I plan to question him myself."

  "And?"

  "And find out just what it is the varmint really knows," Karbenko said with a large smile.

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  CHAPTER EIGHT

  "I'll tell you, Smitty, you're running some operation here," Remo said. "World War III is getting underway all because of you and where are you? Out on a golf course and you leave Ruby around to run things."

>   The faintest flicker of an unaccustomed smile brightened Smith's face for a millisecond.

  "Ruby is a prize," he said. "I don't know how I did this job all these years without a good number two."

  "She's a number two all right," Remo said. "She's a shit. She spends all her time yelling at me."

  "Not so loud, Remo," Smith said. "She'll hear you."

  Remo glanced toward the closed door of the office, dreading the possibility that it might just burst open and Ruby would march in, assailing his eardrums with her earthmover voice.

  "Yes, Remo, not so loud," said Chiun. "She might hear you."

  Remo whispered. "I liked it better when it was just you," he said to Smith.

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  "I didn't think I would ever hear you say that," Smith said.

  "Emperor," Chiun said, "Remo has nothing but the highest regard for you. He often tells me this, that he would work for no one but you at these wages."

  Smith recognized the start of a pitch for more money and interrupted quickly.

  "You're both going to England," he said. "I want you to get in close and protect that Russian ambassador."

  "I should think you'd be worrying about the Russian premier instead," Remo said.

  "I am, but I can't get permission to send you to Russia," Smith said.

  "And you have permission to send us to England?" Remo said.

  "Not exactly. But I can get you to England."

  "You can get us to Atlantic City, too," Remo said. "Why not send us there? They've got casino gambling now."

  "Or Spain," Chiun said. "Spain is nice in the spring. And a Master of Sinanju has not been in Spain since the time of El Cid. I think the Spanish could probably use us well. The Spanish were always good."

  "England," Smith said.

  Remo looked at Chiun. "Whenever we're supposed to go someplace, you always want to go to Persia for melons," he said. "Why all of a sudden Spain?"

  "Because Persia is now Iran and the melons are no longer any good and we tried working for the Persians and they are idiots," Chiun said. "I

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  thought you and I might look around in Spain. El Cid was really very good. Until Sinanju went to work for him, he could do nothing right, but then we straightened things out for him and he chased out the Arabs. We made him a star."

  "I don't believe it," Remo said. "Charlton Heston would never have anything to do with the House of Sinanju."

  Chiun ignored that. "We gave him Valencia," he said.

  "Sure," said Remo.

  "We made him what he is today," Chiun said.

  "He's dead," Remo said.

  "Exactly," said Chiun. "A terrible tragedy."

  Remo turned back to Smith. "That means El Cid tried to stiff the House of Sinanju on their fee, and they turned on him. You better make sure that Thanksgiving shipment of gold to Sinanju is never late."

  "It's always on time,'' Smith said. "And now you're going to England.'

  "I don't want to."

  Smith pressed the buzzer on his desk. "Ruby, would you come in here, please ?"

  Remo stuck his fingers in his ears.

  Ruby entered the office.

  "Remo doesn't want to go to England," Smith told Ruby. "Would you please convince him to go?"

  Ruby started. Remo pressed his fingers harder into his ears. It was no use. He could not drown her out. If he pressed his fingers in any farther and any harder, he would puncture his own eardrums.

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  He waved his hands in surrender.

  "There be a plane at Westerchester County Airport waiting for you," Ruby said. "You better be getting there fast."

  "It's not Westerchester. It's Westchester," Remo said sullenly.

  "Whatever it is, the plane's waiting there for you. Get a hop on, 'cause if you miss it, you be in big trouble."

  "I'll fix you for this, Smitty," Remo said. "Some night, I'm going to pour quick-setting cement down her throat so she can't yell at me anymore and then I'm coming back for you."

  "Fine," Smith said, "but first go to England. And make sure nothing happens to that Russian."

  Remo and Chiun left Folcroft Sanitarium in the backseat of an institutional car. They did not see the man in a ten-gallon hat sitting behind the wheel of a red Chevrolet Nova parked near the Folcroft entrance. Ruby, watching Remo and Chiun leave from a front window, did and wondered what somebody in cowboy clothes was doing parked near Folcroft. She called the front gate and told the guard to be very casual about it but to write down the license number of the parked car.

  Just in case.

  They were the only two passengers on the private twin-engined jet that nosed around immediately toward the east and began humming its way across the Atlantic.

  Chiun sat by the window, staring at the wing. He had once told Remo he was amazed at how

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  well the western world had done in stumbling on a good design for an aircraft, but he also believed that nothing done by a white man was ever fully correct. So if the design was good, the wings must be loose. On flights, he always sat by the window, staring at the wings as if willing them to stay on.

  Remo folded his arms and sat back in his soft leather seat, determined not to enjoy the flight.

  "How the hell are we going to defend some Russian when we don't know if we'll be able to get to him and we don't know who we have to defend him from?" he grumbled.

  "It was in the days just after Wang, the first great Master of Sinanju," Chiun said.

  "What was?"

  "The Great Wang had had much success in bringing the services of Sinanju to many places and accumulating gold to help care for the weak and the poor of the village. But then he died, as all men must. And in the prime of his life, too. Barely eight decades of life had he lived.

  "Sinanju was young then, too, and those who had asked the help of our House thought that the secrets of Sinanju had died with the Great Wang. They did not know that each Master trains his successor. Some are fortunate to have good students, respectful and obedient. Others are less fortunate."

  "You're getting ready to pick at me again, Chiun, and I won't stand for it. I didn't pick you; you picked me. And you only did it because there wasn't anybody in Sinanju good enough to teach," Remo said.

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  Chium ignored him.

  "So after the death of the Great Wang, there was no more work, and without work there was no gold. Soon the village was hungry again. We were preparing to send the babies home to the sea."

  Remo grunted. Hard times in Sinanju, for scores of centuries, had always been accompanied by "sending the babies home to the sea"-tossing newborns into the North Korea Bay to drown because there was no food for them to eat.

  "The new Master was Ung. He was a quiet man, much given to the writing of his poetry."

  "He's responsible for that dreck you're always reciting at me?" Remo said.

  "You are gross, Remo. You are really gross. It is well known that Ung poetry marks one of the high points in the history of literature."

  "Three hours of unky-punky grunts about a flower getting ready to open? Bull-whipple," Remo said.

  "Silence. Listen and perhaps you may yet learn something. The Master Ung, with sorrow, put aside his pens and realized he must do something to save the village.

  "Now it happened at this time that there was a Japanese warlord who was usurping the property of many other lords around him. And this warlord did greatly fear for his life because there were many who wished his death. This story did reach our village and the Master Ung heard of it, and left for that faraway country. Before he left, he sold his writing implements and his many poems so that the village could be fed."

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  "Selling those poems wouldn't keep the village in Saltines for ten minutes," Remo said.

  "Over the seas he traveled, and Ung went to the Japanese warlord and offered to protect him from his enemies. The warlord had heard of the Great Wang and since this was his successor, he contracted with
Ung to protect him. For an attempt to kill the warlord in his sleep had been made just the night before, and the Japanese knew he was in mortal peril.

  "Still he did not know which of his enemies were trying to kill him. There was a family to the north and a family to the south and a family to the east and a family..." "To the west?" said Remo. "Yes," said Chiun. "You have heard this story before?" "No."

  "Then be silent. There was a family to the north and a family to the south and a family to the east and a family to the west, and the Japanese warlord did not know which of them might be trying to kill him, because all had reason to fear his reckless and ruthless ambitions.

  "But Ung spoke to the warlord in his poetic way. 'When bulls break down fences,' he said, 'sometimes rabbit steal corn.' The warlord thought of this for many hours and then he understood what Ung meant, and he began to think which of his own court might try to kill him so that he himself could take the warlord's place.

  "The more he thought of it, the more he came to suspect his eldest son who was evil and cruel, and that night he turned Ung's hand against the

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  son and the son was no more. But still later that night, another attempt was made to kill the warlord in his sleep and only the swift intervention of Master Ung saved the Japanese's life.

  "The warlord then felt bad that he had suspected his eldest son unjustly but he came to think some more and he realized that it was his second oldest son who was even more evil and cruel than the first-born son. And he turned Ung's hand against that second son.

  "But still there was another attempt on his life, again foiled only by Ung's arrival at the very last moment,

  "And so it went. One by one, Ung removed the seven sons of the warlord, seven evil young men who, if they had been elevated to the position of warlord, would have been even more ferocious than their father and even more brutal than he in their dealings with their neighbors.

  "And when the seventh and last son was dispatched, the warlord and Ung met in the great hall of the palace. And the warlord said, 'We have disposed of all my sons, every one. So the danger is removed and I am again safe.'

  "It was more a question than a statement, Remo, since the Japanese are a sneaky people and their questions are really statements and their statements are really questions. But Ung answered, 'Not yet. You still face one danger.'