Misfortune Teller td-115

by Warren Murphy

  "That's what I thought," Remo groaned.

  He could see them clearly now. There were two rows of them. One lined up before the other. They stretched from one side of the street to the other, effectively blocking the avenue to through traffic.

  Berlin police officers were standing with rifles before the cars, faces taut. Hazy rain dribbled across the stabs of flashing blue light issuing from the roofs of the dozens of parked cruisers.

  "We could bail out here," Remo suggested rapidly. "They'd never catch us."

  "And abandon my treasure to these stickyfingered Huns?" Chiun asked, incredulous. "Never!"

  "That's what I thought you'd say," Remo sighed. He hunched down behind the steering wheel. "Brace for impact."

  When it became obvious that the truck was not going to slow down, the order to fire was given by the commanding officer on the scene. The gunfire started before they even slammed into the first line of cars. Rifle fire crackled through the damp evening air.

  Quarter-size pockmarks erupted across the nose of the rushing truck. The windshield spiderwebbed then shattered in a spray of thick greenish chunks.

  Remo and Chiun had ducked behind the dash board. Glass exploded across their backs as they tore into the defensive police line.

  Berlin police scattered out of the path of the truck like timid matadors from a crazed bull. The vehicle lurched as it slammed the first row of cars. Bullets riddled the doors and side panels as the large truck roared past.

  Fortunately for Remo, the police cars were of the small European style. They were flung from the crumpling nose of the truck as it plowed forward into the second line. It pushed these aside, as well. More slowly now, it continued onward, bullets and shouts following it.

  When he got back up, Remo saw the pursuing police cars winding their way through the twisted wreckage. Wind whipped around his stern face through the open front of the truck. He turned from the side-view mirror.

  "This is getting worse and worse," Remo commented. "They'd just better not lock the gates before we can get there," he warned.

  Chiun shook his head firmly. "They will not lock the gates," he insisted. "For they would not dare."

  "ARE THE GATES SECURE?'' Ambassador Pak Sok asked nervously. He was a squat man with a face as flat as a flying pan bottom. He wiped at his sweaty forehead with his handkerchief.

  "Quite secure," replied the ambassador's assistant, who was also an officer of the Public Security Ministry.

  Sok did not seem convinced.

  It was not that he thought his aide was lying. Although he did not trust his assistant in most matters, Sok knew that he would not lie about something as trivial as a locked gate. He simply was not convinced that a locked gate would make any difference. In fact, it might only make things worse.

  As ambassador for Choson Minchu-chuff Inmin Konghwa-guk, otherwise known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Sok was his country's highest-ranking diplomat in Germany. He enjoyed all the perks of his posting, including access to Germany's uncensored television broadcasts. It was on the TV that he had seen an image that made his heart sink.

  The television was on now, sound down. In the large living room of the North Korean embassy, Sok turned away from the tall multipaned window, looking back at the screen.

  A white truck continued to race desperately down Germany's streets, relentlessly pursued by an ever growing convoy of police vehicles. A news helicopter had been following the action from the sky for the past twenty minutes.

  To Sok it looked almost like the internationally famous chase that had taken place in America a few years back. But this time the truck was driving at breakneck speed, not at a snail's pace. And there was not an ex-football player cowering in the vehicle. Sok would have preferred that it be an American celebrity unknown to him. Unfortunately, he knew all too well who was in that truck.

  "He cannot hope to come here," Ambassador Sok's aide said, watching the screen intently. The truck was racing down familiar streets. It was only a few blocks from the embassy.

  "I would hope not," Sok agreed, his voice betraying his jangled nerves. He turned from the television back to the window. His fingers gripped tightly at the thick silk fabric of the red floor-length curtains. Vines crept artfully away from the walls and across strategic portions of windowpane. "You are certain the gates are locked?" the ambassador asked.

  "Yes, yes." The aide nodded. He bit a thumbnail as he stared at the TV screen. Eyes growing wide, he suddenly grabbed for the remote control.

  Sok heard the gunshots beneath the serious German voice of the reporter. He wheeled around in time to see the truck barrel into a line of parked police cruisers. Cars flew in every direction as the truck pummeled its way through to the other side. It skidded sideways momentarily and then righted itself, racing away from the smashed cars.

  "Where is that?" Sok asked.

  "About two-"

  "Wait," the ambassador demanded, raising a quieting hand. "Turn that down," he ordered.

  The aide did as he was told. When the sound had been muted once more, they continued to hear the muffled gunshots. A moment later, Sok's heart sunk as he heard the frantic squeal of tires. Turning back to the TV, he saw the truck finishing up a crazed turn around a very familiar corner.

  "They are here," the ambassador said, his voice dead.

  "THE GATES ARE CLOSED!" Remo yelled as the truck screamed up to the North Korean embassy.

  "They do not leave them open on a normal day," the Master of Sinanju pointed out. Gusts of air from the open windshield whipped fiercely at the gossamer tufts of hair above each ear.

  "The guards have guns!" Remo shouted.

  "Do they not always?"

  "Not pointed at us!" Remo replied.

  At least ten embassy guards were standing in the long driveway just inside the closed gate. Kalashnikov rifles jutted through the spaces in the tall wrought-iron fence, aimed directly at the nose of the approaching truck.

  Remo's mirror had been picked off by a Berlin police officer. A big enough slab of glass remained that he was able to see the cruisers closing in behind.

  "There's not enough time to stop," Remo warned Chiun.

  "Do as you must," the Master of Sinanju conceded. "Just do not lose any of my precious treasure."

  "That's the least of my worries right now," Remo said.

  Turning the wheel sharply to the right, Remo jumped the truck onto the curb at an angle. The big vehicle tipped slightly to one side. Rapidly, he cut the wheel to the left. The vehicle leveled off as it raced across the sidewalk.

  Beyond the gates, the eyes of the Korean embassy guards grew wide as the truck barreled remorselessly toward them. As one, the guards opened fire.

  They did not have much time to shoot.

  The truck crashed the gates a second later, scooping up four guards and flinging them roughly aside. The others scattered like flung jacks into the bushes as the truck flew crazily up the drive.

  The brakes were hit the instant the truck struck the gates. Tires screamed in protest as the vehicle screeched toward the ambassador's residence. Black streaks of smoking rubber spread in crazy zigzags as the truck tried frantically to both stop and remain upright while doing so.

  In the end, it could not do both.

  Halfway up the driveway the big truck toppled over onto its passenger's side. Sparks popped and paint ripped away as the vehicle slid toward the ivy-covered brick walls of the Korean embassy.

  Inside the vehicle, Remo and Chiun kept their bodies loose. The moment the truck hit the driveway, they met the impact with an equal repulsive force. They immediately joined with it. The two Masters of Sinanju floated as safely as babies in a pool of amniotic fluid as the truck skidded to a slow, determined stop.

  A slight impact at the last moment indicated that the truck had tapped against the wall of the embassy building. Sideways now, Remo could see oddly vertical bricks piled up through the smashed windshield.

  The sudden intense silence w
as filled almost instantly by the sounds of car after car squealing to a stop back beyond the blown-open gates of the embassy. Shouts in both German and Korean filled the air.

  Sitting sideways on the upended truck seat, Remo Williams listened to the yelling voices outside. He had one hand braced against the roof of the truck. "We're not out of the woods yet," he commented. He glanced over to the Master of Sinanju-more a glance down than sideways now.

  Beyond Chiun's broken window was driveway. The old Korean had braced one bony hand similarly against the roof.

  "You did that on purpose," Chiun accused.

  "Did what?" Remo asked, his brow creasing.

  "You deliberately tipped this vehicle over onto its side." He looked at the pavement, which was framed in his window like some strange modern painting rendered in asphalt.

  "Geez, Chiun, we've got more important stuff to worry about right now," Remo complained.

  Scuffling footsteps sounded immediately outside the truck. For a moment, Remo thought that the Berlin police had dared to venture onto embassy grounds. But all at once, a familiar red face appeared in the remnants of the front windshield. Remo recognized Ambassador Sok.

  "Sorry. We thought this was the McDonald's drive thru," Remo said with an apologetic shrug.

  The Korean diplomat was very undiplomatic in his expression. Clearly, he would have found this whole incident more pleasing if Remo and Chiun had perished in the crash.

  His face pinched disapprovingly as he rose wordlessly from his bent posture. Almost as soon as he was gone, he began shouting down to the gathered police. He spoke in English, the accepted international language.

  "Diplomatic immunity! Diplomatic immunity! These are Korean diplomats and this is sovereign North Korean soil! Please to stay beyond fence!"

  Sok's voice grew more faint as he hustled down the drive to the twisted remnants of the embassy gates. He was greeted with shouts and jeers from the Berlin police.

  Somewhere far above, Remo heard a helicopter rattling loudly.

  "Let's take stock, shall we?" Remo suggested heartily. "So far we've pissed off the Germans, the Koreans and-when Smith finds out about this-America, as well. All that for a few scraps of yellow metal. Whaddaya think?" he asked with growing sarcasm. "Was it all worth it, Chiun?"

  On the seat below him, the elderly Korean turned a baleful eye up to his pupil.

  "Yes," droned the Master of Sinanju simply, adding, "and I am not talking to you."

  Chapter 5

  "No way," Dr. Wendell, the surgeon who had performed the emergency procedure, had insisted. "I will not be a party to it. If you leave, it is with my strongest reservations."

  "Listen to reason," suggested Dr. Styles, the general practitioner who had diagnosed the edema. But though he used his most rational tone, his words fell on deaf ears.

  "Folcroft Sanitarium is more than suited to handle these cases," the doctors' patient had declared.

  The doctors pushed hard for an extended stay-unusual in the modern era of "everything as outpatient" medicine. But this was an extreme case; the patient was at the sensitive time of fife when the seriousness of something such as excess fluid on the brain could not be overstated.

  Already, while in the care of New York's Columbus-Jesuit Hospital, he had fallen once on the way to the bathroom. Of course, it had been the night after the operation and he should not have been out of bed in the first place, but their patient was determined.

  "Determined to kill himself," Dr. Wendell muttered to Dr. Styles in the hallway prior to their last attempt to keep their patient in the hospital one more day.

  He was running a big risk leaving, but their patient had made up his mind. Apparently, that was that.

  Of course, he could suffer more dizzy spells that might cause him to fall down a flight of stairs. The fluid could build up once more. Most insidious of all, years down the road he might even develop a tumor at the site. Who knew? In such cases, it was always best to play it safe.

  "This is craziness," Dr. Styles said. "You've only been here two days."

  "Where are my trousers?" Harold W. Smith asked in reply.

  Smith was an absolutely terrible patient. Full of intelligent questions and eager to get everything over with as quickly as possible. Even brain surgery.

  The old axiom was true. Doctors did make the worst patients. The fact that the gaunt old man was listed as "Smith, Dr. Harold W." on all of his hospital forms went a long way toward explaining his attitude. But though Smith held the title of doctor, no one-not even his personal physician-seemed to know what he was a doctor of.

  He was director of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York. That much was clear. For it was into the care of this respected but terribly exclusive and secretive care facility that Harold Smith was given over.

  Smith accepted the mandatory wheelchair ride out of the hospital without complaint. A parsimonious man, he reasoned that the orderly assigned to escort him from Columbus-Jesuit would be paid whether he wheeled Smith to a waiting car or not. Better that the boy did his job as he rightly should rather than use for idle purposes the ten minutes it took to bring Smith downstairs. And-though Smith hated to admit it-the Folcroft administrator was not sure if he could have walked down on his own.

  Dr. Lance Drew was waiting for him downstairs.

  Dr. Drew was the chief physician at Folcroft, answerable directly to Smith. He instantly took over from the orderly, aiding his frail-looking employer into his car. It was a forty-five minute drive from the city to Rye.

  When the familiar high wall of Folcroft appeared beside the road, the sight seemed to hearten Smith.

  He was not an emotional man by any stretch of the imagination. Few physical objects held much meaning to the taciturn Harold Smith. But Folcroft was different. It had-in a large way-been his home for more than three decades. Rarely did a day go by without Smith's passing between the somber granite lions set above the gates of the venerable old institution.

  In a sense, this was a homecoming. Although he had never entered the grounds in quite this way before, he felt more energized than he had in a long time. Even when he was feeling perfectly well.

  Taking the car past the small guard shack, Dr. Drew drove rapidly up the great gravel driveway to the main building. He parked at the front steps, hurrying around to the passenger's-side door.

  At first, Smith was determined to negotiate the stairs on his own. He found, however, that he was having trouble simply getting out of the car.

  "Please take my arm," Smith asked eventually. His reserved tone belied his embarrassment.

  Dr. Drew did as he was instructed. When he reached a helpful hand for Smith's battered leather briefcase-the only luggage the Folcroft director had brought with him to the hospital-Smith pulled it away. His strength in this seemed quite surprising.

  "I will carry it," he insisted.

  Drew only shrugged. He held firmly on to Smith's biceps as Smith clasped the doctor's forearm for support.

  "Careful, careful," Dr. Drew instructed soothingly when they were at the stairs. "Take them slowly. We have all day."

  Smith found Drew's tone patronizing in the extreme. He would have liked to have said something, but all of his energies were being devoted to negotiating the staircase. It had never seemed so high before.

  Once inside, Smith settled into a room in the special Folcroft wing. Virtually deserted now, it only held patients on an infrequent basis.

  There Smith worked, not only on his recovery, but on the small laptop computer that he kept stored in his precious leather briefcase.

  Like the physicians at Columbus-Jesuit, Dr. Drew discouraged Smith from working. There was nothing, he said, that would not keep until the Folcroft administrator had made a complete recovery.

  "Hydrocephaly is no small matter, Dr. Smith," Dr. Drew said.

  "I am aware of that," Smith replied as he typed away at his keyboard. He was careful to keep the text on the small bar screen turned away from the Folcroft doctor. />
  "It is an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid inside the skull. Your skull. Where your brain is?"

  "I do not appreciate sarcasm," Smith replied crisply, eyes leveled on his computer.

  Dr. Drew merely threw up his hands and left.

  Of course, Smith knew how serious his medical condition had been. It was the result of an obstruction caused by a severe blow to the head. The unrelieved pressure had caused Smith much discomfort for many days, including vision problems, nausea, vomiting and a relentless, pounding headache. The headache had been the thing that finally propelled him to the doctor and ultimately to surgery.

  But the bandages were gone now, the small incision scar was a puffy memory of the operation and the patch of gray-white hair that had been shaved from his pate was on its stubbly way to filling back in. It was three weeks after the operation now, and Smith was firmly on the road to complete recovery.

  Besides, he had work to do.

  Not Folcroft business. If it became necessary, his secretary was well trained by her employer to handle long absences. The work that occupied all of Smith's time as he sat alone in the virtually abandoned wing of the big old institution had nothing to do with the grounds or building in which he had toiled tirelessly for thirty-plus years. Truth be told, every last brick of Folcroft could have toppled over into the cold black waters of Long Island Sound and the lifework of Harold W. Smith would still go on.

  Unbeknownst to all who worked there save Smith himself, Folcroft was merely a cover. A public face for a most private enterprise.

  It would have shocked the staff to learn that the place to which they reported to work every day was in reality the greatest and most damning secret in the two-and-a-quarter-century history of the United States Constitution.

  Folcroft was the home of CURE, a supersecret agency of the U.S. government.

  In the dusty basement of Folcroft, a hidden bank of four mainframe computers augmented with optical WORM-drive servers toiled endlessly and anonymously. Locating, collecting, collating information from the World Wide Web. The Folcroft Four, as Smith had dubbed the computers in a rare display of creativity, stretched their fiber-optic tendrils literally around the world. The data gathered was brought back electronically to Smith for his perusal.