"Oh," Remo said. "I guess I forgot to mention the Sunnies who were killed."
"Yes, you did," Smith said aridly.
"There were about fourteen of them," Remo explained. "One of the hit men got off a couple of rounds before I could get to him."
Smith's pinched face grew troubled. "And they did not report that, either?" he said. "How is it possible they could have kept it sec-?" Smith paused, a sudden realization dawning on him. Typing swiftly, he brought back up on his computer screen the original story that the mainframes had collected.
"Remo," the CURE director said flatly when he was again scanning the familiar lines of text, "I am looking at an Associated Press story out of New York that concerns a number of unidentified bodies that have washed up along the banks of the East River this morning. All eight victims died of gunshot wounds."
"They can't be the ones, Smitty," Remo said. "The police collected the bodies."
"You said there were no police," Smith said slowly.
"They showed up after."
Smith considered. "One moment, please." The aching in his fingers long-forgotten, Smith rapidly accessed a stealth program that allowed him to slip into the computerized homicide records of the NYPD. "There is no evidence of any bodies being removed from the Sunnie ceremony," he said after only a quick perusal of the files. Leaving that aspect of the police system, he logged in to another area.
"That's impossible," Remo insisted while Smith worked. "I saw them myself."
"No," Smith said firmly. "You did not." He had stopped typing. "Whoever you saw was not with the police. There are no records of any officers being placed on duty near Yankee Stadium during the wedding ceremony. Nor were any summoned there for any type of disturbance."
"They were phonies?" Remo asked.
"So it would seem."
"So you think the bodies in the East River are who? The hit squad or the Loonies?"
"It seems that the ones who have washed up so far would be with the Grand Unification Church. All young white males. But there have only been eight in all. Your Korean assassins might still be out there. I will alert the authorities to begin conducting searches along beaches and in the waters between the Triborough and Bronx-Whitestone Bridges. The bodies collected thus far have been tightly concentrated roughly at the midpoint of this area."
"I don't know, Smitty," Remo said doubtfully. "If they dumped twenty-three bodies into the river at once, doesn't it seem like at least one of the eight corpses that have turned up so far would be one of the killers?"
"Possibly," Smith conceded. "But not necessarily. We will learn more when the Korean bodies are recovered."
"I'm kind of curious to know who they were," Remo said.
"As am I," Smith agreed. "I do not enjoy the prospect of assassination squads running loose on American soil. I will contact you when any new information presents itself." Smith was typing as he spoke. "I asked you before if you were at home, but I do not believe you answered."
"Yeah, you did, didn't you?" Remo said.
Instead of a reply to his query, Smith heard the familiar flat buzz of a dial tone.
Chapter 16
The first government agent to peer into the mysterious box from America threw up. He pressed his hands tightly against his mouth as brown rice launched from between his tense fingers.
"What is wrong with you?" demanded the security agent assigned to watch his colleague. For suspicion rather than security, there were always at least two men in each detail. The second agent's face was angry.
The first agent was vomiting so hard it was impossible for him to speak. He merely turned away at the question, shaking his head as he continued to retch uncontrollably.
The second agent scowled. As he sidestepped both the still vomiting agent and the pile of clotted rice-thick with stomach fluids-gathering at the man's feet, the second North Korean official peered inside the cardboard case.
His lunch immediately joined that of his comrade on the cold concrete floor.
They vomited and vomited until there was nothing left but air. For several long, painful minutes, they continued to dry heave.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea was starving yet again. Food was being strictly rationed, and every meal was meager.
When they were through vomiting, rather than leave the former contents of their stomachs for the cleaning staff to take home to divide among the members of their starving families, the two men got down on their hands and knees. Like dogs, they began scooping up and eating their own vomit. Only when they had licked the floor clean did they leave the room, careful not to peer at the ghastly contents of the innocuous open box.
THE HEAD OF THE People's Bureau of Revolutionary Struggle was immediately summoned to the locked airport room. He arrived from his Pyongyang office by official car twenty minutes later.
As he entered the small secure room, he noted with disdain the stench of stomach fluids.
The two security agents accompanied him inside. They hung back by the door, faces ashen, as the PBRS head strode over to the cardboard box.
The head of North Korean intelligence did not have the same response to the box's contents as his subordinates.
"When did this arrive?" he asked, hooded eyes peering inside.
"An hour ago," was the reply from one of the sickly men.
"Directly from America?"
"America? No. It came from the South."
"With a message from America," the intelligence head said leadingly.
The men glanced at each other, puzzled. "None that we know of," one admitted.
Hmm.
For a few moments, the older man merely stared into the box, tipping his head to see inside from different angles. But all at once, to the horror of the two men across the room, the director of PBRS reached inside the box. He used both hands, shoulders making a shrugging motion as he clasped the object contained within.
He lifted it out into the wan fluorescent light of the drab little room located off the main Pyongyang terminal.
For the second time within a half hour, the first security agent's lunch spewed out onto the floor.
The other man had braced himself. Covering his nose and mouth, he managed to keep his rice down, though his stomach knotted in waves of churning acid fire. He swallowed the clump of rice that had gathered in his throat.
Across the room, the director of the People's Bureau of Revolutionary Struggle turned the object over in his hands. He was like a woman in a market carefully appraising a large melon. Except melons did not have noses.
The severed head had distinctly Korean features. But it was somewhat desiccated, even though it had been encased in some kind of plastic shrinkwrap.
The wrapping twisted the nose to one side and flattened the eyes even further than nature had. Deep maroon pools of blood had gathered, mostly dry now, at the bottom of the tight bag. Through the congealed blood, the director could make out jagged tears in the flesh of the neck. The object employed to remove the head had not been particularly sharp.
Without warning, the director tossed the severed head to the subordinate who had yet to throw up in his presence.
"Have this taken to the PBRS forensics laboratory immediately," he ordered.
There were eight other boxes just like it stacked neatly beside the first. They had yet to be opened.
"Do not open these," the PBRS director commanded. "I will hold the two of you responsible if they are damaged in any way. Take them to the lab, as well."
As the director marched from the room, the security agent holding the tightly wrapped package only nodded. To open his mouth would be to release a mouthful of vomit onto the upturned face of the head in his hands.
ONCE THE SHRINK-WRAP had been cut away and the frozen-in-death faces had been forced back into some semblance of normalcy, their nation of origin became more evident.
The faces were certainly Korean. But were they from the North or the South? Perhaps they were not even from divided Ko
rea at all. They could merely be foreign nationals of Korean ancestry.
Fortunately, the forensic experts did not have to rely solely on the heads. Aiding the laboratory investigation was the fact that a small case had been packed inside each box. The first was discovered in the original container amid a pile of white foam packing.
Fingers. Packed like fresh Cuban cigars.
They were lined up between plastic dividers. Two rows of five, one atop the other.
Fingerprints taken from the detached digits were matched against official government records. When suspected matches were found, file photographs were compared to the severed heads.
The identities were soon confirmed. The nine heads with their attendant fingers had belonged to agents from the North Korean delegation to the United Nations.
Further proof came while the lab was completing its work. A phone call from the UN consulate in New York reported that several PBRS agents had gone missing.
The head of the People's Bureau of Revolutionary Struggle learned of the telephone call while he was still reading the lab's findings. It was all the proof he needed to request an urgent audience with the Leader for Life of Korea, Kim Jong Il.
The Supreme Commander of North Korea was in his basement office in the presidential palace when the head of his secret intelligence force was ushered in.
Framed posters of successful American films were crammed together around all four walls. Wherever faces appeared on the long subway prints, the graphics had been altered to give the actors Asian features. The head of PBRS walked briskly past a blood-red poster on which a Korean Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock looked out disdainfully across the vast office.
Premier Kim Jong Il sat in a blue director's chair in front of a special wide-screen projection TV in the corner of the enormous office. Fuzzy images raced around the large screen.
"Can you believe this?" the premier demanded once the security agent had traversed the office. His face was a scowl.
"You have heard?" the intelligence director asked, surprise in his sharp voice.
"Heard? What kind of stupid question is that? Of course I've heard. I just can't believe it."
Though the situation was grave, the PBRS director allowed a small amount of relief. There were times-more of them than he cared to think of when the North Korean premier was less than interested in state business.
The director did not worry at the moment that there was an obvious leak in his own department. He would deal with that later. All that mattered now was that the premier knew of the problem and understood its gravity.
"This is terrible," Kim Jong Il wailed.
"Yes, it is," agreed the director.
"The worst thing that ever happened," the Korean Leader for Life moaned.
"I am heartened by your appreciation of the situation."
"I could have done twice the box office of this," Kim Jong Il lamented.
The security chief paused. "Excuse me, O Premier?"
"The box office," Kim Jong Il said. "They pulled in 230 mil, domestic. For what? A bunch of flying cows and a few lousy wind-machine effects. Moo, blow. Moo, blow. Crap, crap, crap. And the story? Pee-yew. I could come up with a better outline sitting on the can."
For a moment, the security director thought that the premier had finally succumbed to madness; however, all at once he noticed the action on the screen behind Kim Jong Il. The premier had been in the middle of watching a two-year-old American movie when the PBRS director came in. The heir to the throne of Kim Il Sung had a passion for movies that no one in his country understood.
"I see," the security director said slowly.
"I mean, stink-o-rama," Kim Jong Il insisted. "They've got a sequel coming out to this piece of crap, don't they? I wouldn't use the print to wipe my ass."
"There is a problem," the security chief said.
"Don't tell me-tell editing," the Leader for Life of Korea said, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture. He stuck a fat fist into a large cardboard tub propped between his knees. Buttered popcorn spilled to the floor as he shoveled some of the puffy white snack into his mouth.
"Not with the film, my premier," the security chief said evenly.
"Don't bet the ranch on that, Charlie," replied the North Korean leader, his mocking laugh muffled.
"It is with the Americans."
Kim Jong Il paused in midchew. "What about them?" he asked, damp popcorn spilling from his mouth.
"Some of our agents in the field have been eliminated."
"Eliminated? What do you mean, eliminated? That's dead, right?"
"That is correct, Premier."
Kim Jong Il shrugged. "And?" he asked.
"The bodies were brutalized, Premier. The heads and fingers were removed and sent to us. Most likely for identification purposes."
"Chopped off?" the premier asked.
"Yes, my leader."
Kim Jong Il considered for a moment, chewing languidly at his popcorn. "Cool," he said eventually.
"Premier?"
"I mean, cool as a visual. Great scene for a movie. A head in a bag. I can see the camera panning slowly up on it. What's in it? the audience wonders. Tension building. Eerie music." He framed his hands into a makeshift camera lens as he stole up to an imaginary sack.
"Forgive me, Premier, but I believe that this is something far more serious than a scene in a film. Agents have died. Real agents."
Sitting before the security man, Kim Jong Il dropped his hands. "Don't get huffy with me, buddy," he warned. "I know what you're talking about. I was just trying to visualize."
"Of course, my leader," the security man said, bowing.
"So what's the deal? Are the Americans pissed at us for some reason again?"
"I do not know, Premier," said the security director. "Their President could not be weaker. He has allowed our nuclear program to continue unchecked. Perhaps there are elements in his government concerned with our having atomic capability. This could be their doing."
"A warning, you mean," Kim Jong Il said.
"It is possible."
The premier considered. "You're sure these are our boys, not some sort of Manchurian Candidate impostors?"
"There is no doubt."
Kim Jong Il exhaled loudly. He placed his nearly empty popcorn container on the floor. "How about the injuries to the necks?" he asked.
"Premier?"
"You said the heads were cut off. Cut off how? Like a knife, like a sword, like magic-how?"
The security man seemed puzzled by the last method the premier mentioned. How could a head be removed by magic?
"A blunt object was used," he said. "There was more tearing than slicing. Our forensic experts say that toward the end, the heads were ripped free."
Kim Jong It shook his head. "It's not who I think it is," he said firmly. "If it was one of them, they'd have made it look cleaner than a bowl of Boraxo."
"I do not understand," the security chief said.
"Be thankful you don't," the premier said pitifully. "It's cost me about a billion bucks in jet fuel to keep them happy over the past couple of months." He considered. "But this isn't their style. If they weren't happy with the way I handled their cargo, I'd be dead before I even knew it."
"No one could get to you," the security chief said, chest puffing out in pride.
Kim Jong Il only laughed.
"So what do you think?" the Premier asked a moment later. He was wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. "Are the Americans playing some kind of game with us, or what?"
"I honestly do not know, premier. However, I would recommend retribution for these killings. We cannot allow any government to imagine weakness on our part."
"Leave our spies to spy in peace, is that what you're saying?" the premier asked. He did not wait for an answer. "Look, do what you think you have to to get ready for a counterattack. But don't -I repeat-do not set anything in motion until you okay it with me. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Great Leader." The security chi
ef turned to go.
Frowning, Kim Jong Il leaned back in his Hollywood director's chair. "Oh, wait a second," he called after the head of the People's Bureau of Revolutionary Struggle.
The PBRS head turned, thinking something important had been forgotten.
Kim Jong Il was holding his cardboard popcorn container.
"Be a pal and get somebody to pop me up another batch," he said. He waggled the box of unpopped kernels.
Chapter 17
The banks of buzzing switchboards had been set up in what had once been the grand ballroom of the East Hampton, New York, estate of the Reverend Man Hyung Sun.
Cubicles with portable partitions concealed row upon row of telephone psychics. Remo had to admit, it was quite an operation.
He had returned here with Chiun after the mass wedding ceremony two days earlier. While the Master of Sinanju was in conference with the Reverend Sun, Remo had been forced to tour the grounds alone. He had grown bored with the gaggle of devoted Loonies working the grounds, and so had wandered into this large room.
Walking through the lines of switchboard operators, Remo paused near one in particular. She was a huge woman in a paisley muumuu. Beads and shark teeth had been tamed and coaxed onto several long cords around her thick neck. Giant looping gold earrings with extra dangling crystals hung from meaty earlobes.
Every light on her switchboard blinked crazily. For each light, a hopeless, foolish caller waited for remunerated guidance from a total stranger. As Remo watched, the woman plugged into one of the jacks beneath a blinking green light.
"Sun Source Psychic Network," the woman announced. "I am Dame Lady Mystique, your personal conduit to Reverend Sun." She chewed gum as she listened to the problem of the caller at the other end of the line. "Yeah," the woman said, flipping absently through a catalog that rested before her switchboard, "I got a real strong feeling about that, honey. Two, seven, eight, fourteen, twenty-one and twenty-nine. You get all that? Okay, play those and good fortune will come your way someday soon." She hung up on the caller, flipping instantly to another line. "Sun Source Psychic Network," she repeated to her newest customer.
Disgusted, Remo left Dame Lady Mystique to bilk her latest rube.
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