Dangerous Games td-40

by Warren Murphy

  "I think your head is funny," one of the cops would growl, but he would write in his report, "No witness to Hefferling murder."

  Remo walked back to his hotel room, strolling past the Playboy Club, where he waved at people sitting near the windows and yelled at them that they ought to be playing racquetball, instead of drinking so early in the day.

  Back at his room, he walked up to an aged Oriental who sat in a lotus position in the middle of the carpeted floor. Remo said, "I am Everyman. Beware my vengeance." He pointed his index finger toward the ceiling for emphasis.

  The Oriental rose in one smooth motion, like smoke escaping from a jar, and faced Remo. The old man was barely five feet tall and had never seen a

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  hundred pounds. At the sides of his head, white wisps of hair flitted out from his dried yellow skin.

  "Come, my son, and sit," he said to Remo, guiding the young man forcefully to the couch. Remo didn't want to sit down. The old man gently touched his chest and Remo sat down.

  The old man shook his head and said sadly, "I have been expecting this."

  "Expecting what, Chiun?" Remo asked.

  "The strain of learning the techniques of Sinanju has finally driven you mad. It is my fault. I should have known that a white man could not stand the strain forever, even with my genius to guide him. It is like trying to pour an ocean into a cup. Eventually the cup must crack. You have cracked. But remember this, Remo, before they come to take you away: you did well to last this long."

  "Come on, Chiun. It was a joke."

  Chiun had returned to the lotus position and appeared to be praying for Remo's memory, his hands folded across the lap of his purple kimono.

  "Chiun, stop it. I'm not crazy. It was just a joke."

  "A joke?" Chiun said, looking up.

  "Yes. A joke."

  Chiun shook his head again. "Worse than I feared. Now he jokes with the teachings of the Master of Sinanju?"

  "Come on, Chiun, stop fooling around."

  "My heart is broken."

  "Chiun-"

  "My spirit is low."

  "Chiun, will you-"

  "My stomach is growling."

  The cartoon lightbulb flashed on over Remo's head. "Oh, crap. I forgot your chestnuts."

  "Don't apologize, please," Chiun said. "It is nothing, really. I couldn't expect you to remember a sick

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  old man's request, when you had the chance of frolicking with those rabbits."

  "What rabbits?"

  "At that palace of evil."

  Remo scrunched up his face, trying to remember what Chiun was talking about. "Oh. They're bunnies, not rabbits."

  "I will pray for your salvation."

  "Chiun, I promise you, I didn't even walk past that place."

  Chiun snorted. "The promise of a white man who also promised to bring home chestnuts."

  "The promise of a student of a Master of Sinanju, of the greatest Master of Sinanju," Remo said.

  "I will believe you for all we have meant to each other," Chiun said.

  Remo stood up, bowed from the waist and said, "I thank you, Little Father."

  Chiun waved a hand magnanimously. "You are forgiven. Now go buy my chestnuts."

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  CHAPTER THREE

  When the threat to the United States Olympic team arrived at the office of the Olympic committee, it was immediately brought to the office of R. Watson Dotty, head of the committee.

  He was, however, otherwise occupied. He had heard that there was a swimmer in Sierra Leone who had accepted a free pair of bathing trunks from a swimsuit manufacturer, and Dotty was trying to pin down the rumor so he could demand the athlete's banishment from the upcoming Moscow games. It was Dotty's feeling that no one in the world but him knew the difference between amateur and professional, and he was dedicated to keeping the difference alive. So he pushed aside the note that was laid on his desk by his assistant.

  "Better read it, Commodore," his assistant told Dotty.

  Dotty looked up, annoyed at the tone of fiat in his assistant's voice, but picked up the note. It was handprinted in block letters. It read:

  "In protest at the harassment of athletes from South Africa and Rhodesia around the world, the United States Olympic Team will be destroyed. This is no idle threat."

  The note was signed "S.A.A.E." and under that was printed "Southern Africans for Athletic Equality."

  "Shall we take it seriously?" the assistant asked.

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  "How the hell should I know?" Dotty said. "I can't be bothered with this stuff. There's a swimmer in Sierra Leone and I know he's stealing commercial money. We have to protect our amateurs from him."

  The aide wanted to say that he doubted the Sierra Leone's swimmer's graft would pollute the Olympic swimming pools, but contented himself instead with pointing out that perhaps American athletes should be protected against this threat from the S.A.A.E.

  "Have you ever heard of this group before?" Dotty asked.

  "No, Commodore."

  "Neither have I. Dammit, why do people have to do things like this?"

  His assistant didn't answer and finally Dotty said, "Forward it to the FBI by special messenger."

  "The president too?" the assistant asked.

  "Of course," Dotty said. "The White House too. Let them worry about it. I've got important things on my mind. Go ahead. Send them off."

  When Ms assistant left the room, Commodore R. Watson Dotty, who had been awarded his military title by a yacht club in landlocked Plainfield, New Jersey, slammed his fist down on the desk.

  Let it be a crank.

  "Be nice if it was a crank," the director of the FBI said.

  "We can't take that chance though, can we, sir?" asked the director of Special Operations.

  "I should say not. And I guess we'll have to alert the White House."

  "They already know, sir," the director of Special Operations said. "A copy was sent there as well as to us."

  The FBI chief shook his head. "Did he send one to anyone else? The UN or the CIA or the Washington Post? God, doesn't the fool at the committee

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  know we're here to handle these things? If we thought the president should be notified, we'd notify him."

  "You've got one out of three, sir," the assistant said.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The UN and the CIA didn't get copies but the Post did. So did the New York Times and all the TV networks. Seems the SA.A.E. made enough copies to go around."

  "Bloody nice of them, wasn't it?" the director said. He was of the opinion that when he said things like that, he sounded like Sir Laurence Olivier. He'd always wished that during the war he had served in Great Britain so he could have had an excuse to affect an English accent. "Bloody nice indeed," he repeated.

  Wonderful, the president thought. Wonderful. To inflation, unemployment, the oil crisis, and our overseas alliances falling apart, I can add the slaughter of the U.S. Olympic team. Reelection? I'll be lucky I don't get lynched.

  "Mr. President?" one of his staff said and he looked up in surprise from the note. He had forgotten they were standing there.

  "The press wants a statement of some kind."

  "It's a crank," the president said. "It has to be." It better be, he thought to himself. / just don't need this.

  "I don't think that's the right tack to take with the press, though," his top assistant said.

  "All right. How about this? We guarantee- absolutely guarantee-that nothing will happen to any of our athletes in Moscow. Try that. Absolutely guarantee. Make me sound like that football player in panty hose. You know what I mean. That might be good."

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  "Okay," the aide said. "We can do that."

  "But check it with my wife first," the president said. "She might have some other ideas."

  "She usually does," the press secretary muttered under his breath as he left the office.

  His remaining aide said,
"Shouldn't we do something about security?"

  The president fixed him with his best I-was-just-coming-to-that glare and the man quieted down.

  "I want the Russians notified that we have to be involved in the security arrangements. Our team's been threatened. They have to let us in."

  "All right, sir."

  "The FBI's working on this?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay, go do what I told you."

  When the room was empty, the president brooded and thought about the no-dial telephone upstairs in the dresser in his bedroom.

  The telephone connected directly to the secret organization CURE and its director, Dr. Harold W. Smith. The president's predecessor in office had explained it all to him. Smith had been tapped some years back to run the CURE operation. The idea was to work outside the Constitution to put the squash on crooks who were hiding behind the Constitution. But over the years, CURE'S operations had expanded and now it was ready to go anywhere, to do anything. Every president, he was sure, had felt the same way coming into his office: he would never use CURE.

  And just as he had, every one of them had wound up using it.

  Not that it was easy. The president could not give CURE orders. He could only suggest missions. Dr. Smith was the final boss. There was only one order a president could give that would instantly be obeyed: disband. No president had ever done it because every

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  president had found that America needed CURE and Dr. Smith and the enforcement arm, Remo, and the little old Oriental who did the strange things.

  The President of the United States went up to his bedroom and removed the receiver of the phone and waited for Smith to answer at the other end.

  Why was the phone always so cold? he wondered.

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  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dr. Harold W. Smith did not like to meet in public places. That was his position. Remo's position was that if Smith wanted to meet with him and Chum, he would have to meet where Remo told him to.

  And so, because he knew that Remo was quite capable of disappearing for three months without even a word, Dr. Smith found himself hi a cable car high above the pedestrian walkways of the Bronx Zoo, trying to explain the latest problem to his two assassins.

  "Really, Remo. The Bronx Zoo?" Smith complained.

  "I like zoos," Remo said. "I haven't been to a zoo in a long time."

  Chiun leaned close to Smith. "He is hoping to find some relatives, Emperor," he whispered loudly in Smith's ear.

  "I heard that," Remo snarled.

  Chiun looked up with an expression of bland innocence.

  "And stop calling him emperor," Remo said.

  Chiun seemed surprised. For thousands of years the Masters of Sinanju had contracted out their services to emperors, czars and kings of the world, and he thought it only fitting to refer to Smith as Emperor Smith. He said to Smith, "Ignore him. He is testy because everybody in the monkey house looks

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  exactly like him and he can't pick one relative from the next."

  Smith pointed at the only other occupant of the cable car, a man asleep at the far end, sprawled across the seats. Remo and Chiun could tell he was stone drunk, because for them the fumes of his inebriation hung like thick fog in the car.

  "He's out of it," Remo said. "Don't worry about it. So I'm supposed to babysit the entire Olympic team?"

  "Foolish child," Chiun said quickly. "The emperor would not ask you to perform such an impossible task. This assignment seems most reasonable."

  Remo looked at him suspiciously. He knew that Chiun generally thought that Smith was a lunatic because Smith resisted all Chiun's offers to eliminate the president of the United States and make Smith ruler-for-life.

  And then Remo understood.

  "Don't let him soft-soap you, Smitty. He wants to get over to Moscow for the Olympics so he can win a gold medal and go on television and get rich doing endorsements."

  "Chiun?" Smith asked, leaning back and looking at the frail, aged Korean.

  "Why not?" Remo asked. "He can win any event he enters. All of them, for that matter. So can I."

  "For once you speak the truth, housefly," Chiun said. "He is right, Emperor."

  "Well, Remo, you'll get a chance to prove it," Smith said. "The people in Moscow are being just about what you'd expect. Stubborn. They don't want any American security people in Russia. They figure they'll be CIA agents spying on them."

  "We could send the whole CIA and they'd be lucky to find the Olympic Stadium," Remo said.

  "If you want us to get secrets," Chiun started to tell Smith.

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  "I appreciate the offer, Master," said Smith. "I really do. Perhaps another tune. Rerao, you'll have to travel with the team as an athlete. But you'll have to work your way on through competition."

  "You've got to be kidding," Remo said.

  "This is wonderful," Chiun said. "If I can't go for the gold myself, who better than my own son?" He leaned close to Smith again. "He's not really my son because he's funny-colored, but I just say that to make him feel good." He leaned back. "Of course, I will travel with him."

  "Of course," Smith said. "You can travel as his trainer."

  "Perfect," said Chiun.

  "This is a pain," Remo said.

  "It will work out fine," Smith said. "Are you sure he's asleep down there?" He pointed again to the drunk at the end of the car.

  "Out for the night," Remo said.

  "What events shall we compete in?" Chiun asked Remo.

  "I don't care. Pick one."

  "You could win all the track events easily," Chiun said.

  "Yeah," Remo said. "What've we got? The dashes, the hurdles, the 800 meter, the 1500, the mile, two-mile. There's the marathon, and . . . let's see, things like shotput, and pole vault, high jump, long jump. Aaaah, there's a lot of them."

  "And gymnastics," Chiun reminded.

  "Horse, parallel bars, rings, balance beam . . ."

  "And be careful not to set any new world records at these qualifying contests," Chiun said. "That's not where the endorsement money comes from. Save the world records for the Olympics."

  "Yes, Little Father."

  "You can't possibly compete in all those events," Smith said, trying to regain control of the discussion.

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  "The brilliance of the Emperor," Chiun said. "Of course he is right, Remo. If you competed in every event, you would win every event, and so there would be no need to send an Olympic team."

  "So? Then I wouldn't have to babysit them."

  Smith shook his head in disbelief. "You're not babysitting. Go to Moscow, find out where the threat comes from, and eliminate it."

  "And win gold medals," Chiun said.

  "Maybe they give one out for stupid assignments," Remo said. He looked at their faces and threw up his hands. "All right, all right. Pick an event. Not a marathon or anything like that. Something that doesn't take a lot of time. I just want to get in there and get out of there is all."

  "We will let an impartial party decide what medal you should win," Chiun said. He stood up and walked to the sleeping drunk, touching him quickly on the shoulder. The man did not stir. Chiun called out twice, softly. "Wake up. Wake up." The man did not move. Chiun took the man's right earlobe between thumb and forefinger and squeezed.

  "Yeow," the man yelled, jerking awake. He looked around in surprise, and saw Chiun standing in front of him, resplendent in a heavily brocaded yellow daytime robe.

  "I must be dreaming," the derelict said. He rubbed his ear. But if he was dreaming, why did his ear hurt so much?

  "Listen," said Chiun. "We are not concerned with your stupid ear. What kind of gold medal should we win in the Olympics?"

  "You?" the drunk said. He looked Chiun over carefully. "Maybe the Golden Age Mile. You can all walk."

  "Not me," Chiun said. "My student." He pointed and the man craned his neck to get a better look at Remo.

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  "He don'
t look so young either," the drunk said. "And he don't look like no athlete. I'm thirsty."

  "Pick an event," Chiun insisted.

  "Something that's not too hard. Maybe he can run. He looks like he's been running from cops. Can you run? A half-mile. Maybe he can run a half a mile?" He decided he was awake and he wondered who these people were and what they were doing in his zoo. Maybe while he was asleep someone had taken him from the zoo to the asylum.

  "Yeah, I can run a half-mile," Remo said.

  "Okay. Do a half-mile. Or meters. I think they do it in meters now. America has switched to the metric system. They even sell booze by liters now. And there's meters and millimeters and like that." He swelled his chest with pride. He felt like a patriot.

  "Shut up," Chiun said. "Thank you." He returned to Remo. "Give the man a nickel for bis trouble."

  Remo walked over to the drunk, who was still mumbling about meters and millimeters and liters. Remo slipped a fifty-dollar bill into the derelict's hand, keeping his back turned so that Smith, who paid all the bills, would not see.

  "Here," Remo said. "Buy yourself an imperial load on."

  "I don't believe all this," Smith said.

  "He will win," Chiun said. "You will see."

  "I can't wait," Smith said.

  The cable car bumped to a stop at the platform and the drunk scurried out of the car, running with his new-found fortune to the nearest bar and, in the process, setting his own lifetime best for the 983-yard run.

  When Smith, Remo, and Chiun stepped from the car, they noticed that everyone else in the zoo seemed to be running too.

  "Something's happened," Smith said.

  "These people are scared," Remo said. A man in

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  a zoo guard's uniform ran toward them and Remo collared him.

  "What's going on, pal?"

  "Brian's escaped," the man said, as if that explained everything. He tried to resume running, but felt rooted to the spot. The skinny man's hand on his shoulder seemed to weigh a ton.

  "That's great," Remo said. "Who's Brian?"