Last Rites td-100

by Warren Murphy

  "I am not riding any camel," Remo called over. Chiun continued his haggling. Hot words were exchanged, and the argument might have gone on two or three hours except one camel expectorated on the Master of Sinanju's sandals.

  Emitting an offended scream, Chiun began walking in circles, alternately pointing at the offending camel, at the offending camel's owner and at the offending camel again, his squeaky voice escalating into fulsome shrieks.

  Chiun came back leading the offending camel by a thick rope. "We have a steed," he announced.

  "No, you have a spitting camel."

  The camel obligingly backed up Remo's statement by spitting rudely in the dust of Nogongog.

  "He cannot spit on those perched atop him," Chiun declared.

  "No sale. And don't think I didn't see what you did, because I did."

  "I have gotten redress for an insult."

  "My left foot. You saw that camel was spitting to beat the band. You moved your sandal closer to take a shot in the foot."

  "Ridiculous. It was an insult."

  "Even if you didn't move your foot into spitting range, you could have moved it away in plenty of time."

  "I gave the camel drover a choice. Loan me the offending beast without charge or wipe my sandal clean with his beard."

  "You don't have to tell me how it turned out," Remo said, glumly, eyeing the camel. The camel eyed him back. His rubbery mouth masticated something dark and malodorous with ominous relish, and Remo took three hasty steps back and one to the right.

  The saliva made a greenish splash off to his left. The camel resumed his patient masticating.

  "I'm not riding that spitball maker!"

  "Of course," said Chiun. "You must bargain for your own camel."

  "I don't ride camels. They smell, they're unsanitary and they're rude."

  "Then you may walk," said the Master of Sinanju, motioning for the camel to kneel. To Remo's surprise, it did, getting down on all four knobby knees.

  When Chiun was comfortably balanced atop its hump, he made a clucking sound, and the camel rose with a strange grace to his feet.

  The camel started off. Remo followed.

  He soon found there was no happy place to walk near a moving camel. If he led, the camel tried to taste the back of his T shirt. Walking on either side invited expectoration.

  And walking in the rear subjected Remo to camel gas or puddinglike droppings.

  The city seemed to be victim to the immediate aftermath of revolution. There was looting. Dark, frightened faces peered from bullet-broken windows. Fires had blackened many buildings.

  They were only challenged once when a Stomique technical came rattling up a dirt road to block their path.

  It was a pickup truck, a .35-caliber machine gun bolted to the bed. The perforated muzzle swung in Remo's direction, and something was said in harsh Swahili.

  Remo lifted his hands to show he was unarmed, walking up to the muzzle as if it were no more threatening than a water pipe. He offered his wallet. An eager hand reached out to snatch it. Remo pulled it back before questing fingers grazed it.

  The red-bereted Stomiqui soldier screeched something angry and brought his thumbs down on the machine gun's trips.

  The bullets began knocking out of the barrel.

  The first shell exploded a full second and a half after Remo had given the cold muzzle a casual bat with one hand.

  The weapon spun on its steel tripod so fast that when the first bullet emerged from the flaming barrel it had swung a full 180 degrees.

  The machine gunner screamed surprise as his belly was ripped apart by the very bullets he himself had unleashed.

  There were other rebels in the truck. They stuck their heads out of the cab to see what had happened, and Remo showed them how vulnerable their eardrums were. He clapped their ears between his hands, producing a thunder that never ended.

  The two ran off with their eardrums permanently ringing.

  "Okay," Remo said as they resumed their stroll through the remains of Nogongog. "What brings us to this hellhole?"

  "We have come for the gold," said Chiun, searching the neighborhood from the high vantage of his ungainly perch.

  "What gold?"

  "Do you not see that there is a rebellion?"

  "It looks more like an earthquake with small-arms fire for punctuation."

  "This sorry nation is in revolt. Ruling heads are about to be separated from ruling shoulders. Allegiances are soon to change. And where there is revolution, there is sure to be gold and treasure destined to change hands."

  "I take it we're after the gold and treasure?"

  "No. You are."

  "It's mine to keep?"

  Chiun nodded. "If you can seize it without losing your life."

  "Is mere gold worth my life?"

  "Ordinarily, perhaps."

  "Do I have any say in this?"

  Chiun shook his head firmly. "None."

  THEY CAME UPON the presidential palace in what had been the southern outskirts of the city before the jungle had begun to overrun it. Two things were noteworthy about it. It looked like a giant frosted cake standing at the jungle edge. And it was the only building in all Stomique that had not been scorched and broken by rebellious residents.

  The Master of Sinanju brought his ungainly steed to a halt outside the palace gates.

  "I don't see any guards," Remo said.

  "A good sign."

  "Couldn't that mean the gold is already gone?"

  "If you are unfortunate, that is possible," Chiun admitted.

  "I don't care if I grab off any gold or not. I'm on an unlimited expense account."

  "If you do not seize this gold, you will be reduced to pillaging Fort Knox."

  "I don't think they have gold in Fort Knox anymore, Little Father."

  "Then you will have to strain the very gold dust from the ocean to accomplish your task."

  "That could take years."

  "Especially if you strain this gold with your teeth."

  "Be back in a minute or two," said Remo, hopping the twenty-foot fence from a standing position. There was no warning. Remo didn't even flex his knees visibly.

  When his feet hit the ground on the other side, they did so with no more noise that an autumn leaf touching grass.

  Remo advanced, his entire body keying up. His eyes scanned the ground for faint depressions that would tell of buried land mines. None. Motion-vibration detectors were either off line or untended.

  No one took a shot at him as he crossed to the veranda and stepped into the great French colonial villa. Remo pushed open one of the double entrance doors and heard a distinct click.

  Instinctively he grabbed the hand grenade that dropped off its spoon that had been held to the door with bungee cord.

  Pivoting on one foot, Remo relaxed his fingers when he felt the grenade's mass tug at the top of his throw. The steel egg flew nearly fifty yards and let go in midair. Hot steel went in all directions, breaking windows and setting tiny fires in the dry grass.

  One fragment arced toward Remo, its velocity nearly spent.

  Casually he broke a spindle off the veranda and used it to bat the grenade fragment away.

  Then he entered.

  The place echoed with no sounds. Remo shut his eyes. He sensed no living beings-unless the mice skittering in the partitions counted. They didn't.

  Remo swept up the great staircase that looked as if it had come out of Gone with the Wind and found the presidential office.

  The room was empty. Every room was empty. He opened every door to make sure. He encountered no more boobytraps until he tried a cleverly concealed trapdoor in the downstairs kitchen.

  It was a solid piece of carpentry, invisible except for the faint imprint of human oil left by four fingers on the floor where the last person to go down had braced himself while dropping the trap shut after him.

  Remo got down on one knee and looked for a catch or keyhole. He found none. So he punched a finger into t
he hard wood and curled it.

  When he retracted his arm, the trap came up, something mechanical coughed and an ironwood spear with a barbed point ripped through the spot where he would have been had he opened the trapdoor normally.

  It impaled the ice dispenser of an imported avocado Hotpoint refrigerator. Ice cubes clattered out.

  Remo let the trap clank back and, ignoring the wooden steps that might be booby-trapped, dropped into the space.

  There was a concrete conduit that smelled of heavy air, and Remo padded along it to a room at the other end.

  There was no door, only a bead curtain, and Remo passed through it without rattling the beads. There was an open trapdoor in the center of the floor, showing a tunnel. There was no gold in the room. In fact, there wasn't anything in the room expect the square hole in the center of the concrete floor.

  Anyone else would have turned back, but the faint hum of electricity reached Remo's sensitive ears and made the hairs on his bare forearms lift slightly in warning.

  The south wall. It was faced with crude planks, resembling barn-board. Remo attacked the boards and exposed a dirt wall. But the wall looked wrong. The dirt was too dry. This deep in the humid ground, it should have been moist and busy with insects and rootlets.

  Plunging a finger in, Remo felt a hard surface behind the dirt that was plastered to it like dried mud. The catch was actually a small hole near the floor. Remo poked his fingers into it, there was a click and he jumped straight back and down the convenient hole in case it was wired to blow.

  It was. Clods of dirt and wood shards went flying. Some showered down into the hole.

  When the concussion waves abated, Remo climbed up and took stock.

  The explosion had revealed the ponderous face of a time vault that would have done credit to Chase Manhattan Bank.

  Remo approached. The mechanism was locked. There was a digital window that silently counted down the days, hours, minutes and seconds to April 28, 1999.

  "Oh, great," said Remo in the echoing, post-blast silence.

  Making a fist, Remo drove it into the door. The steel rang like a bell.

  And deep behind the door, someone rapped in response.

  Remo hit the door again. Harder this time. He got another response. There seemed to be more than one person inside, because the return rap was a confused tattoo of overlapping sound.

  Feeling around the thick edge of the door, Remo sought weak points. When he had something, he dug his fingers into the flange.

  He yanked. The door groaned slightly. Remo moved in, finding another place. He yanked again. Each time, the door groaned slightly. And as he moved his hands around the dial of the door, the hard, thick steel began to look frilly.

  Three times around the dial Remo worked, each time making the steel looser and looser.

  When the safe door resembled some bizarre, giant frilly flower, Remo had the edges of the two great hinges partially exposed. After that it was easy. He just hammered at it with the edge of one hand until the steel, vibrating higher and higher, succumbed to Sinanju-induced stress fatigue.

  The door toppled out and hit the floor with a ringing clang.

  Remo peered into the space beyond.

  Three dark faces stared back. They were pretty faces, and the eyes in those pretty faces were almond shaped and exotically beautiful.

  Until they went wide at the sight of his unfamiliar white face.

  Then they lit up their Kalashnikovs.

  Chapter 12

  Three screaming bullet tracks converged on the same point, where the white intruder stood.

  They collided and began ricocheting wildly, bouncing off steel, burying themselves in planks and bringing screams from the three African women who had unleashed them.

  "Where is he, the white one?" asked Persephone, blinking dully into the hanging gun smoke.

  "I do not know," said Eurydice, yanking out a clip and inserting another into the receiver.

  "Maybe we have shot him to tiny white slivers of flesh," suggested Omphale.

  But when they stepped out of the vault to see, there wasn't a solitary drop of blood on the concrete floor to show that a man had stood there a moment before.

  "We have missed...." Eurydice hissed venomously. "How could we miss? These are Russian-made Kalashnikovs, not shoddy Chinese rip-offs"

  "That's 'knockoffs,' foolish one," said Persephone. A commotion from the vault brought them swinging around.

  It was the white man. He was opening the apple crates that filled the vault. The amazing thing was that they were nailed shut by ten-inch nails driven by pneumatic nail guns.

  Yet the white was lifting each lid with no more effort than a child peering into a cookie jar. Except the nails screeched. They screeched like tortured Stomiqui dissidents. It brought nostalgic smiles to the three sisters' fine-boned faces.

  Persephone screeched, too. "Get away from our father's crates!"

  "He lock you up in this vault?" asked the white, not looking up from his investigations.

  "Oui. And we are sworn to protect his property with our very lives."

  The white pulled out a can of pina colada mix. "I don't think he left you enough food," he said. "Get away or we will blow you to Chicken McNuggets, white meat," Omphale boasted.

  "You tried that already. Remember?"

  "Oui. So why are you not dead?"

  "It's not my time."

  "You are protected by Shango?" asked Eurydice.

  "Who's Shango?" asked the white, reading the label on a tin of imported Bulgarian caviar and making a face.

  "Shango is our god. After our father, who is more than a god to us, having given us life."

  "Guess he felt he could take it away any time he pleased, too," the white said with casual disinterest.

  Persephone demanded, "Why do you say such a blasphemous thing?"

  "You've got around three weeks' supply of food here."

  "That is none of your damn business, stringy chicken meat."

  "Maybe not, but it's yours if you thought it was going to last you till 1999."

  "What does he mean?" Eurydice asked Omphale.

  "Oui, what do you mean?" Persephone asked the white who was now hovering dangerously near the gold.

  "Check the time clock."

  "Do this thing," Persephone told Eurydice.

  "Do this thing," Eurydice told Omphale.

  "Why do I have to do this if Persephone told you to do it?" Omphale grumbled.

  "Because you are the youngest," sneered Eurydice. "Someday I will be older than both of you and we will see who bosses who about like a Filipina maid. I was not named after a Greek goddess to be a slave." Omphale looked at the time-clock display. It was still counting down. It had counted down nearly a day and, according to the digital display, it was a long way from opening by itself.

  "It says 1999," she said.

  "Liar!" Persephone screeched.

  "See for yourself."

  Persephone rushed to the display. "You changed it," she accused the white.

  "If I could change it," the white countered, "wouldn't I have changed it so I could just throw the handle and open the door instead of ripping it apart?"

  "This is a reasonable point," Omphale whispered.

  Everyone agreed it was reasonable point. Then realization dawned on their dusky faces.

  "You have saved our lives!" Persephone cried.

  "You're welcome. Where's the gold?"

  "It is our father's gold. You cannot have it."

  "Is that the same father who locked you in to starve to death slowly?"

  "Oui..."

  "Don't see that you owe him much." The white ripped open another crate. "You sure have a lot of apples in these boxes."

  "They are apple crates," said Persephone.

  "We like apples," added Eurydice.

  "Oui, " Omphale said. "They are very exotic fruit."

  The white lifted a deep red apple out of the crate he was inspecting. "Waxy, too," he sa
id.

  "The wax is to keep it fresh," Eurydice said. "So that they do not spoil in the baking heat."

  "Oui," Persephone added. "Apples are very delicate."

  The white tossed the apple into the air. It returned to his palm with the meaty smack of a cannonball. "Heavy, too."

  "These are magic apples. They were picked to sustain us many weeks."

  "All the way to 1999?"

  The three sisters wavered in their defiance. Their AK-47 rifle muzzles wavered, too.

  "Should we shoot him?" Omphale hissed.

  "He saved our lives," Eurydice countered.

  "What good is being alive if we have no country, no father and no wealth?" Persephone persisted.

  "Oui. Without wealth, life is not worth living."

  "Let us kill him and enjoy life," Persephone urged.

  "Oui, let's," agreed Omphale.

  And the three AK-47 muzzles lifted toward the white who was puzzling over the waxy apples that were too heavy for fruit.

  Three simultaneous bursts ripped toward him. He was already behind a stack of crates when the bullets arrived in the space where he had been.

  The crates shook under the thudding lash of lead, and splinters flew everywhere.

  One grazed Persephone in the arm, and she dropped her weapon screaming, "I am hit! I am hit! I am bleeding to death!"

  "Good," said Omphale, who redirected her fire at her sister's heaving chest. "Let me put you of your misery."

  The muzzle erupted.

  "Aiiee!" shrieked Persephone, crumpling to the dirt floor.

  The white was suddenly among them, and the first hint of being disarmed came when their fingers began stinging the way they did when their father used to take an admonishing riding crop to them.

  The rifles went down the hole in the floor.

  The two surviving sisters dropped to their knees and began begging for their lives.

  "You can have your useless lives. I don't want them," said the white, returning to the crates. He picked up an apple and balanced it on one thumb. He set it spinning and dug the opposite thumbnail into the waxy flesh. Skin skimmed off like red wood shavings under the action of a high-speed lathe.

  The meat exposed was not white, like the pulp of an apple should be, but yellowish and metallic. Gold. "Bingo!" said the white.

  "You worship Bingo?" said Eurydice.