Last War Dance td-17

by Warren Murphy

  "You've led a full life?"

  "Yes," said the general.

  "A happy one?" asked Remo, moving toward the bronze-skinned general.

  "Pretty much. At least until the last couple of days. Defusing that thing this morning made my life happy again."

  "Pleased with that, huh?" asked Remo, advancing another step.

  "Yes, sir," said Van Riker. "Cassandra's safe now. About the only thing that could set it off would be some kind of big artillery hit."

  "Artillery hit?" asked Remo.

  "Sure. But it'd have to be a big one. A .155 millimeter, at least."

  "Oh," said Remo, stopping where he stood. "A .155-millimeter shell could set it off?"

  "I think so. But it'd have to be a good hit. Hey, where are you going?"

  Over his shoulder Remo said, "To find a .155-millimeter cannon."

  Chiun heard Remo speaking as he reentered the room.

  "If you find a cannon, give it to the nuisance," Chiun said. "Maybe he can figure out another way to blow up his own country."

  "Yuk, yuk," said Remo, stomping out into the morning warmth.

  He was disgusted. All it would take for Cassandra to blow was a .155-millimeter cannon shell, and the Apowa had a .155-millimeter cannon, and they were going to use it on the town church and monument unless Remo delivered up the RIP members to them by tomorrow morning.

  Remo found Brandt in the Big A supermarket, where he was chiding a group of women for squeezing toilet issue. The tissue was piled up almost to the ceiling.

  "Why stop them?" asked Remo. "It's squeezably soft."

  "Nonsense," said Brandt. "The only thing soft is the air inside the loosely wrapped package. The tissue itself feels like sandpaper."

  Looking at the mammoth pile, Remo said, "You must sell a lot of toilet paper."

  "Naaah," said Brandt. "But the guy I bought it from—now, he sold a lot of toilet paper." He laughed at his own joke, then asked, "Are you going to deliver?"

  "Well, see, I wanted to talk to you about that."

  "No time for big powwow," said Brandt. "I've got a business to run."

  "Damn it, man, we're trying to save the world," said Remo.

  "You save the world. All I want to save is this week's profits, and if I don't keep an eye on the checkout counters, the clerks'll loot me blind. I want those RIP slobs by tomorrow morning, or we're gonna blow that place up."

  "How many of them do you want?"

  "All of them," said Brandt.

  "What are you going to do with them?"

  "Give them a bath. Then hang them."

  "That's against the law," said Remo.

  "The hell with the law. Hey, you, leave that toilet paper alone! The hell with the law. They're ruining our church down there. And the law is letting them do it. That's bad enough. Worse is that they're ruining our image. People are watching this thing all over the world, and you know what they're thinking—so that's what Indians are like. We've gotta stop that. I want them all. The only good RIPper is a dead RIPper."

  "How about just Petty and Cosgrove?"

  "No way. Cosgrove'll dance around singing and give me a headache. Petty'll be so drunk he'll be hung before he sobers up. We want them all."

  "Well, I'll try. But what if I can't? That cannon of yours probably won't shoot, anyway."

  "Don't bet on it."

  "How's a cannon that's never been fired going to shoot anything?"

  "It's been fired," said Brandt.

  "Oh."

  "Every week for over a year."

  "What for?" asked Remo.

  "We picked it up from army surplus. We saw all this TV news jazz about riots and urban blight and stuff, and we figured it wouldn't take too long to get here and we were going to be ready for any blighters that tried to ruin our town.

  "I'd love to see that cannon," said Remo cunningly.

  "First you'll hear it. Tomorrow morning. Then if you're still around, I'll show it to you. Listen, you with the funny name, I want them all. All. All."

  "Okay, you'll have them," said Remo.

  "Stop squeezing that toilet paper!" yelled Brandt, turning from Remo and advancing menacingly on a sixty-year-old Indian woman in jeans and moccasins, who waited until he was close, then threw a four-roll pack at him and fled down the supermarket aisle.

  Remo went out into the morning sun, disgusted with himself. Trying to get just one of the RIP people to the right place at the right time might tax his ingenuity; getting forty to deliver themselves to Brandt—and at daybreak, yet—was probably impossible.

  Remo moved into a small municipal park with neatly clipped grass and manicured flowers in geometric patterns, which surrounded a large wooden monument praising the Apowa's veterans. He sat down on a bench to think it out.

  The park, like the Big A supermarket, was near the edge of the mesa, and a half-mile away, well below the elevated village, Remo could see the Wounded Elk monument and the church.

  Why shouldn't the Apowa be angry? They were a people with pride—pride in themselves, pride in their country. The park he sat in was a memorial to wars fought and died in. Little Indian children played among ceremonial machine guns mounted in concrete, old artillery pieces half-buried in the ground, a tank without treads—and also without graffiti. The children's happy voices hung shrilly in the clear air.

  And down there at the church were the RIP ragtags. Hustlers without pride in themselves—and justifiably so. Ripoff artists who were conning the press and the government and someday, perhaps, would even convince the public. At first the public would think they were crazy. But the power of the press is cumulative, and night after night of news about oppression and the brave band of Indian liberators would cause even the strongest minds to lose track of what was really true. That was what at times made the press a threat to the country. Like water on rock, it could wear away traditions, beliefs, standards, and melt everything down in a stew of relativism until there were no absolutes, and the only god was the great savior Ad Hoc.

  Remo listened to the children playing happily among the instruments of past wars.

  Those kids deserved to live, even if only to be allowed to die later on for something that would be worth their lives. It was absurd to allow them to die because of a flurry of rage against the RIP garbage touched off a killing nuclear explosion.

  Remo stood up and walked away from the park with its beautiful high-ground command of the monument and the church and the highway, and headed back toward his motel. He would deliver the RIP members to Brandt. Somehow.

  When Remo got back to his motel, he found Lynn Cosgrove, squatting in front of his door. She looked up at him with supplicant eyes. "You have despoiled me, white man," she said.

  "Yeah, sure."

  "You have made of me a Sacajawea."

  "Whatever you say."

  "I am ruined, made worthless by the power of your evil."

  "Right, right."

  "There is nothing left for me but to subject myself to a life of slavery at your blood-stained hands."

  "Terrific, sweetheart, but not right now."

  "I am an outcast among my own people. I will be your slave."

  "Go eat a Twinkie."

  "Goddamn it, Remo, screw me."

  She jumped to her feet and began stamping up and down,

  Remo touched a spot under her ear, near her throat, and she changed from hissing panther to purring tabby. "Ooooooooh," she moaned.

  "Yes, indeed," said Remo. "Look, I'm going to be very busy today. But tonight, say three A.M., I'll meet you at the church."

  "Ooooooooh."

  "You understand? Three A.M. at the church."

  "Ooooooooh. Yes. Ooooooooh."

  Remo released his light touch. "Okay, go away now."

  "I go, master. This worthless creature leaves because she lives only to do your will."

  She walked away, and Remo watched her leave. Three A.M. at the church. He had a plan, and it might just get the RIP band up to the town.


  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Chiun was not in the room, but Van Riker was. He was sitting in a chair watching a late morning talk show that featured two sociologists and the minority-party senator who had been at Jerry Candler's press conference. They were talking about the deep sociological significance of the Wounded Elk uprising.

  Van Riker looked away from the TV as Remo entered.

  "I've been away from America too long," he said. "Is everybody this nuts?"

  "No," said Remo. "Only the brightest ones. The average people are still pretty sane."

  "Thank God for that!" said Van Riker, running a hand down his well-shaved tan cheek. "Listen to this crap. Will you just listen to it?"

  Remo sat lightly on the edge of the bed and watched as one sociologist—black—said that the events in Wounded Elk were all that could be expected when a people had been enslaved for so long. "Eventually they must rise up against the ruling class," he said. "This is the significance of what is happening in Wounded Elk. Poor, indigent, downtrodden Indians are rebelling against a government whose Indian policy borders, at best, on fascism and genocide. There is a lesson here for all minority peoples."

  Yeah, thought Remo, and there's another lesson up at the Big A supermarket, where the Apowas shop and worry about nonsense like squeezing the toilet paper in a town where they live like human beings, a town they built with their own sweat.

  It consoled him somewhat to realize that probably not a soul up there in the Apowa village was watching the show. If any one was, by chance, he was probably rolling on the floor, laughing.

  The second sociologist—white—was now asking to be flayed. He predicted even higher levels of violence, and his eyes glinted wildly and spittle appeared at the corner of his mouth. He was a man in the throes of passion, ecstatic at the thought of someone attacking whites.

  Then came the minority-party senator. "Political solutions have failed. The administration has refused to support my plan to give everybody ten thousand dollars in reparations. So even though I support the uprising one thousand percent, I must now wash my hands of it. The higher levels of violence that must now come will not be on my conscience but on the conscience of those in Washington who turned a deaf ear to the pleas of those poor Indians."

  The moderator was a slim blond man with a penchant for laughing at himself. This, Remo thought, was of a piece with the philosophy of the French general who once asked where the people were going so he could hurry up and lead them there.

  The moderator now asked what kind of men were occupying the massacre site at Wounded Elk.

  "Average, every-day Indians," said the senator. "Red brothers who have labored to try to build normal lives despite terrible deprivation and hardship."

  Van Riker stood up angrily. "Who and what are they talking about? Is there another Wounded Elk somewhere that we don't know about?"

  "General, you have been away from the country too long. The black one, you see—he's for all kind of violence by everybody. He wants to make violence as American as apple pie because it excuses violence when it's used to promote something he believes in.

  "The white one, well—he's for violence because he thinks he ought to be punished for going to an Ivy League school. It never occurred to him that he went to an Ivy League school because his folks worked and because he had the brains to make it. Somehow, he's gotten the idea that his education was extracted forcibly from somebody who thinks that 'he do' is proper English."

  "And the senator?" asked Van Riker.

  Remo shrugged. "He's just a dumb shit."

  "You know, that's the most perceptive social analysis I've ever heard," said Van Riker.

  "I owe it all to Chiun," said Remo. "By the way, he'll be coming back soon. I don't think he'll appreciate your watching his television set."

  Van Riker turned the set off. "It's all right. I'm going for a walk, anyway. Oh, it'll be nice to get to the Bahamas again. As soon as this blows over and the AEG crews can come and put Cassandra back together again."

  "Have a nice walk," said Remo.

  Van Riker disappeared through the connecting door into his own room, and Remo flopped back onto the bed, debating whether or not to exercise.

  He decided he would, since he hadn't had a good workout for over a week. Where would he exercise today? London? Paris? Algiers? San Francisco? Dayton, Ohio? White Plains, New York? None of them excited him today.

  Wait. There was a little town in the Berkshire Mountains where Chiun had been receiving mail at a post office box. He and Remo had driven up there to collect the mail one day after it had been lying around for months and the post office had threatened to close the box down. Chiun had been expecting job offers and was disappointed because the letters did not contain even one offer of temporary employment. But he stolidly refused Remo's suggestion to throw the letters away.

  What was that town? Right. Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Right. He remembered now. And there was a pond near there. And a Girl Scout camp where the girls sang terrible songs terribly at terrible hours of the day and night. And there was a flautist who walked out to the edge of the pond most mornings to play and to shame the very birds.

  Remo pictured it now. Pittsfield. He closed his eyes. The pond. He put his foot on the edge of the water. He moved slowly to his right, along the water's edge, gliding. It was night and dark, and he glided along, the water's edge, moving swiftly but lightly, trying not to make a sound.

  In his mind he heard his foot touch a twig and snap it. Mentally he criticized himself. He began to run faster, skipping along the pond's edge, setting feet lightly on wooden docks when they got in his way, occasionally running across the bows of anchored boats. Move, move. His speed increased. He could feel a little perspiration forming on his neck. He checked his senses. His heartbeat was increasing. Good. No workout was any good unless the heartbeat accelerated. He felt a cold breeze blow off the water onto his forehead.

  He was racing now at full speed. He was halfway around the pond. He had forgotten something—he had failed to move more blood into his legs. He lay there, willing the blood into his lower extremities, and he felt them flush and heat.

  Good. He kept moving. He slowed down at the Girl Scout camp, stealthily, moving darkly through the dark night. With his hands he found and ripped out the wires of their public-address system, then continued on his way.

  It was another ten minutes before he returned to his starting point.

  His heart was beating strongly; his respiration was up to twelve breaths a minute from its usual seven. There was a faint trace of perspiration on his neck, under his chin, and at his right temple.

  Great, thought Remo, gulping air, moving his heart beat down and his respiration back to normal. What a great workout. What a beautiful evening in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

  The front door opened, and Chiun entered. He paused in the doorway and looked at Remo lying on the bed.

  "Why are you perspiring?"

  "I was just working out, Little Father," said Remo.

  "It is about time you did something but lie on your back in bed," said Chiun.

  "Thank you. I aim to please."

  Chiun stepped inside the room, then turned to usher someone else in.

  "Remo, I want you to meet this nice man I just met. He has a foolish name, but he is a nice man." The fat man wobbled into the room and looked at Remo through piercing electric eyes that looked like chips of blue anthracite, set in a face of uncooked muffin dough.

  "What is your name?" asked Remo.

  "Valashnikov."

  "That's right," Chiun said. "That is his name. But you can call him comrade. He told me everyone can call him comrade. Comrade, this is my son, Remo." He moved closer to Valashnikov and pretended to whisper but spoke loudly enough so that Remo could hear. "He isn't really my son, but I say that to make him feel adequate."

  "It is pleasure to meet you," said Valashnikov to Remo, who was still lying on the bed.

  "See," said Chiun. "See. Isn't he pl
easant? He says hello. Isn't he nice? Don't you like him? Don't you like him better than some emperors we know?"

  At this moment Remo had decided he hated Valashnikov worse than anyone he had ever met or even heard of. A Russian. Wounded Elk hadn't been a bad enough mess. Now the Russians were arriving to turn it into an international debacle.

  "What are you doing here, Valashnikov?" asked Remo.

  "I am cultural attaché to Russian Embassy."

  "And you came out here to find culture?"

  "I am in charge of the Russian-American friendship through the music. I come to hear the authentic Indian music. Mother Russia is interested in such things."

  "Russia is interested in a lot of things, Remo," said Chiun. "Why, do you know that they even treat assassins like honored people instead of the way some people we know treat them?"

  "That's great," Remo said without enthusiasm.

  Valashnikov entered the room and sat down heavily on the stool in front of the dresser.

  "Is truth," he said. "Russia understands principle of using different skills the different people have. We honor assassins. Particularly those who have done the labor for many years without the reward."

  He looked at Remo searchingly. Remo looked at Chiun, whose eyes were rolled upward in a gesture of humility and unconcern. Remo looked disgusted. So Valashnikov was just a recruiting agent; Remo would have preferred it if he had been a spy.

  And Remo was getting annoyed with Chiun's job hunting. It was one thing to expect America to fold and collapse by three o'clock the next afternoon, but looking around to other countries for work… why, that was wrong. And Remo's thinking it was wrong was the only proof he ever needed that he was not the master of Sinanju and never could be. Chiun was an assassin; all sides were the same to him as long as they paid on time. Remo was a patriot; he wished to use his skills for no one but America. He would make no moral judgment about which attitude was better. It was just that he and Chiun were different.

  "Any assassin who came to work for Mother Russia would find warm welcome," said Valashnikov. He looked to Chiun. "High honors," he said. He looked to Remo. "Much money."