Assassins Play Off td-20

by Warren Murphy

  Needham screamed.

  The callused bare heel of the big man touched his nose.

  And stopped.

  Needham could see the spaces between Wetherby's toes, only a few inches from his eyes. He could see the hard, tanned calluses on the bottom of the lieutenant's foot.

  Wetherby stood still a moment, the ball of his foot still touching Needham's nose, and then his thin lips opened and his widely spaced teeth showed in a smile, and he took a deep breath. "Okay, Needham," he said. "You were squeezing hard that time but you forgot to fall right. Remember, roll and slap your arms to spread the impact out."

  He nodded. "Okay. Off the mat." Needham, who would realize only later that his fears about being killed in front of a class of fellow police recruits were irrational and groundless, rolled over and moved, sorely stiff, off the mat.

  Wetherby turned back toward Foster who had watched the action with a fixed grin.

  "Now that's the way to do it," Wetherby said. "No pattycake. Break the hold, throw the man and stomp. Is any of this seeping in through that concrete barrier you call a skull?"

  His eyes met Foster's and he saw a glint of anger in the black man's. Wetherby did not bother to show any emotion. He did not like blacks; he thought they destroyed any police force they served on; he especially disliked them when they were cocky as Foster was.

  "Do you think you can do it now?" Wetherby asked.

  "Oh, I can do it, Lieutenant," said Foster. "Don't you worry about it."

  "I never worry."

  Foster stepped forward into the center of the mat.

  "Ready?" asked Wetherby.

  The black recruit bounced up and down in place, light athlete's movements to distribute his weight evenly and make sure his balance was proper.

  "Okay," he said. "Go on… sir," he added in a verbal sneer.

  Wetherby slowly raised his hairy thick arms and took a light grip on Foster's slick brown neck.

  "Go!" he shouted and squeezed.

  Foster felt the sudden shock of pressure on his throat. He felt the pain of thumbs pressing into his Adam's Apple. He did as he had been taught.

  He curled his left hand into a fist and punched upward toward the ceiling, between Wetherby's two arms, then slammed his left arm outward. The force of the blow was supposed to force the strangler's right arm to let loose. But, instead of the crash of bone and muscle against bone and muscle, he felt Wetherby's right arm collapse, retreating, absorbing the pressure of Foster's blow by bending before it. And all the while the burly lieutenant kept the death grip with both hands on Foster's neck.

  Foster tried the same stroke with his right hand, but with the same result. Wetherby allowed his arm to absorb the impact of the blow by moving his arm backward slightly, but not enough to dislodge his own grip on the black man's neck.

  Foster looked into Wetherby's eyes. There was a smile in them. They crinkled at the corners with amusement. Shit, thought Foster, this man's crazy, this crazy honkey is going to strangle me.

  Foster's eyes widened in panic. He felt his chest start to ache as the air was slowly being cut off from his lungs. He tried to gasp and suck in air. He could not. He repeated the hand maneuver, both hands punching up, simultaneously this time, but Wetherby pulled him forward by the throat so that Foster's fists struck his own forehead.

  The black man brought a knee up hard, trying to strike Wetherby in the groin, anything to make him loosen the grip. But his knee contacted only air. Help, he tried to shout. Let me go, motherfucker, he tried to say but no words came out of his throat. His eyes felt as if they were clouding over. He felt no more urge to attack. He tried again to breathe, but he could not and then he felt a lazy softness pass over his muscles and his eyes closed, as much as he tried to will them to stay open, and then the class saw that he was hanging like a rag doll from the hands of the lieutenant.

  Wetherby held on, squeezing, a few seconds longer, then he released his grip and Foster, unconscious, dropped back heavily onto the mat.

  The watching rookies murmured.

  "Don't worry, he'll be all right," said Wetherby. "But that's a new lesson for you. Don't get fancy, because the minute you do, you're going to meet somebody who's better than you. Do whatever it takes to take your man out and do it quickly and with no regrets. Otherwise, you're going to end up like him." He' looked down contemptuously at Foster, who was starting to regain consciousness with some gasping groans. "Or worse," said Wetherby. "If you can imagine that."

  He toed Foster. "Okay, Shaft. Up and at 'em."

  Still groaning, Foster slowly rolled over from his back onto his stomach, then lifted his knees until he was up in a crawling position. No one moved among the watching recruits until Wetherby nodded. "Give him a hand, somebody," he said.

  He looked over the heads of the recruits at two men walking through the door. He felt a tingle in his hands and he sucked a breath deep into the pit of his stomach. Now. At last. It was now.

  "All right, men," he said. "That's it for the day. See you tomorrow."

  He walked toward the door where he was met by the deputy chief in charge of police training.

  "Fred," the man said. "This is Mr. Slote. He's a magazine writer doing a piece on police training procedures."

  "Good to meet you," said Wetherby, extending his hand to shake the other man's.

  Nothing exceptional, he judged. Thick wrists, but barely six feet tall and slim. He gave away four inches to Wetherby and probably seventy-five pounds, and thick wrists or no, strong for his size or no, it wouldn't be enough, because a strong and good big man beat a strong and good smaller man every time.

  Well, almost every time, Wetherby corrected in his mind. There was one little man who was so good that Wetherby would never fool with him. It was strange to think about. Here he was a policeman and dedicated to the law, and somehow he had been pulled outside the law. At first he had told himself he had done it because he wanted the combat secrets the little man had promised him, but now he knew there was another reason, an overwhelming reason. Lieutenant Fred Wetherby did what the little man said because he was afraid not to. It was that simple. And because it was that simple, Wetherby did not have to have any second thoughts about it and he could just stand back and enjoy what he had been told to do. Like kill this puny little Mr. Slote who stood in front of him.

  "I'll be glad to show you around," said Wetherby. "We're unusual in police training in that we put so much stress on hand-to-hand combat. Do you know anything about hand-to-hand combat, Mr. Slote?"

  "You can call me Remo. No, I don't know anything about it."

  "I'll leave you two alone," said the deputy chief. "If you want anything when you leave," he told Remo, "just stop in my office."

  "Sure thing, chief. Thanks."

  He turned to watch the deputy chief go. Wetherby said, "What happened to your arm?"

  Remo put a hand gently up toward his left shoulder. "Talk about clumsy. Would you believe a garage door closed on it?"

  "Not really," said Wetherby, meaning the words, but smiling to take away the insult of them.

  Remo, annoyed because he had thought he was moving well despite the left arm which he could not move at all today, said, "I've heard a lot about you."

  "Oh?"

  "Yeah. Fellow in Tenafly. Hawley Bardwell. He said he studied with you."

  "Bardwell, Bardwell. I don't know any Bardwell," said Wetherby.

  Remo covered his surprise, while deciding that Lieutenant Fred Wetherby was a liar. Lynette Bardwell had name, rank, and serial number. She couldn't have been mistaken about Wetherby.

  He said nothing and allowed himself to be shown around the now empty gymnasium. He had started his new life in a gymnasium much like this one. A gym at Folcroft Sanitarium. He had just recovered from an electrocution that wasn't on the level, and someone had put a gun in his hand and promised to let him go if he could shoot an aged Oriental skittering across the gym floor. And because Remo was cocky and young and sure of himself, he a
ccepted the offer and wound up eating splinters from the gym floor.

  Wetherby was showing Remo training posts, padded two-by-fours' used to teach hand blows, when Remo asked, "Do you find your trainees ever use this knowledge?"

  "Sure," said Wetherby. "Think how many times a policeman has to throw a punch to defend himself. How much better is he if he uses something better than a punch?"

  "But don't you feel upset about turning men out into the streets who have this terrible weapon in their hands?"

  Wetherby smiled at the faggy liberal bleeding heart reporter, and wondered how this Remo Slote had managed to get so much on the bad side of Mr. Winch. He locked the inside gym door as he strolled past the practice posts.

  He showed Remo toward the practice mats. "We train recruits for forty full hours in hand to hand combat."

  "Forty hours," said Remo. "Wow, that's a lot."

  "Not nearly enough to get good," said Wetherby.

  "By the way," said Remo, touching the mat with his right toe, "you didn't tell me where you had trained with Bardwell."

  Wetherby stood on the mat facing Remo. They were five feet apart. "I told you, I don't know any Bardwell. Probably just another amateur."

  "And you're a professional?" asked Remo.

  "Right. Here's why."

  One moment, Wetherby was standing, talking. The next moment, he was in the air, heading toward Remo. His right leg was cocked underneath his flying body. Remo recognized the move. The right leg would come into the top part of his body. As Remo fell backward Wetherby would land, and the next step would be a killing hand-blow to Remo's temple.

  That was if it was done right.

  To be done right, it could not be done to Remo.

  Wetherby's leg lashed out. The foot took Remo heavily in the right shoulder.

  But there was something wrong with the technique Wetherby had been taught. He could only land the next blow, the killer to the temple, if his opponent went down and didn't strike back.

  Remo did not go down. He struck back. He stepped backward one step, saw Wetherby's midsection as open as a church collection basket, and put his own foot into the policeman's solar plexus.

  It was over that fast. Wetherby's blow. Pop. Remo's response. Splat.

  The look of killing hatred on Wetherby's face changed immediately to a look of puzzled query. His eyes opened wide as if in surprise. He dropped onto his back on the mat. His eyes stayed open.

  "Crap," said Remo. "Crap and double crap." Another suicide pilot dead in an attack and Remo still had no information.

  And now he had another worry. The fire in his right shoulder, where Wetherby's foot had landed, was spreading through the upper part of his body. He tried to lift his arm. It raised slowly with almost no power. But at least he could still move it. By the next day, he feared he would not even be able to do that. But as long as it worked, he had to use it. He couldn't just waltz out of police headquarters, leaving the dead body of the training officer in the middle of the gym floor.

  Slowly, with his right arm held stiffly, he dragged the burly man's body to a supply room at the end of the gym. With every step he took, the pain throbbed more in his shoulder. He felt like screaming now. Another suicide attack. And why?

  It was while he was stuffing Lieutenant Wetherby's body into the bottom of a barrel filled with basketballs that he finally understood what it all meant.

  He left the gym, disgusted. He had found out nothing, and yet he had found out everything. He was being subject to the traditional Sinanju attack of disrespect.

  Two more blows were yet to come.

  But he knew no friends of Bardwell, no friends of Wetherby's, and he did not know when or where the third attack might come.

  He would have to back go to Lynette Bardwell and try again, look for another name.

  But he knew now whose name was already signed to the fourth blow that awaited Remo.

  The name was Nuihc. Chiun's nephew, who had vowed death to both Remo and his Korean master.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In Pyongyang, the loss of a people's tank was put before Kim Il Sung, premier of the People's Democratic Republic.

  Sung was not from Sinanju, nor was he a believer in the old ways. He was a leader of the new way and he was called comrade by peasant and warrior alike, for he said they were all equal. Still, Sung always wore his warrior uniform with general's boards on his shoulders and a stiff black leather belt.

  Sung nodded when he first heard the story. He had heard of the Master of Sinanju, he said. A fairy tale designed to cover the activities of a horde of bandits and cutthroats, he said, and sent a follower named Pak Myoch'ong to go look into the story, for it had been believed that the Masters of Sinanju were of the past, and not a thing for a People's Democratic Republic to worry about.

  The first person Pak Myoch'ong took himself to was the governor of the province in which Sinanju was located. The governor had anticipated and dreaded the query because it was he who had instructed the soldiers to confiscate the tribute sent every year by the Master of Sinanju to his own village.

  "Why do you question me such?" asked the governor. "Do you doubt that I can rule this province?"

  "If the premier doubted you could rule, you would not be governor," Myoch'ong said. "No, I merely ask who are these men who destroy a people's tank with their bare hands."

  "It is not I who say so," said the governor. To Myoch'ong it was a denial that any Master of Sinanju existed, so he asked "If not the Master of Sinanju, who?"

  "The Americans," said the governor. He pointed out the ship that had been sighted near Sinanju just the week before. And were they not capitalists? And did they not hate the People's Democratic Republic of Korea, and were they not schemers and doers of all manner of evil things?

  Myoch'ong said nothing, for he was a wise man and he knew that while it was good for the people that their hatred should be aroused and directed toward someone outside of Pyongyang, nevertheless everytime he heard the word "American" he suspected it was a way of claiming innocence for failing to do one's duty.

  So he took himself to Sinanju where there was rejoicing and he said to a child:

  "Who is this man called the Master of Sinanju? I would meet with him."

  The child took him to a large house at the end of the village's main street. The house was old but made of wood and ivory and stones from other lands, not the weak wood of the Korean countryside.

  "How long has this house been here?" he asked the child.

  "Forever," said the child, which to Myoch'ong meant only a long time because he knew children. But such was the look of the house, the mix of styles from many lands and cultures, that he said to himself, yes, this house is very old. It is the history of many races; it is the history of man.

  Even though Myoch'ong was a server of the new way from his youngest days, when he entered the house he bowed and took off his shoes in the old way, which his people had taken from the Japanese. He bowed to an old man with white beard whose hands had fingernails grown long in the manner of the ancients, and the old man said:

  "Who are you that I have not seen you in the village?"

  Myoch'ong answered that he was from Pyongyang and served Kim Il Sung, and asked if the old man were truly the Master of Sinanju "of whom many wonders are spoken."

  "I am the one of whom you speak," said Chiun.

  "I have heard that with but your hands you are more powerful than the people's tank."

  "That is true."

  "How can it be true? Steel is harder than flesh."

  "The greatest weapon is the human mind. A tank is but a tool and no better than the mind that uses it."

  "But fools can destroy wise men with it."

  "I say unto you, young man, that there are wise men and there are wiser men. But the wisest among them has learned only that he has not uncovered the true strength of his mind. Even a fool who uses his mind is stronger than a wise man who does not."

  Myoch'ong admitted his confus
ion and Chiun said:

  "You seek a man of miracles. Yet the greatest miracle is man himself. And this I know and this you do not know and this your Pyongyangers in the people's tank did not know and now they sit in the sand like empty shells."

  "I still do not understand," said Myoch'ong. "But perhaps our premier will. I would take you to him."

  Chiun waved his hand in dismissal. "Sinanju does not come to Pyongyang. Return to your loose women and wine."

  But Myoch'ong was not ready to leave.

  "If you have such great wisdom, why do you not seek to share it with your people? Why do you sit here in this house alone, with none but this serving girl?"

  "Can an ocean fill a teacup? Can the sky fill a bowl? So it is that Sinanju cannot be given everyone."

  "But it is given many."

  "Few," said Chiun.

  "I am told that you are not the only Master of Sinanju."

  "There is a pretender named Nuihc who calls himself Uinch or Winch or Chuni. All these are the same. He is one man, the son of my brother."

  "See. So you share with him."

  "That share will soon be removed," said Chiun, "and removed so thoroughly its remover will be white. This I say to you. The heart is the first home of the House of Sinanju, and when I found none of ours worthy, I gave it to a white man."

  "An American?" said Myoch'ong, disclosing his worst fears.

  "One I found eating hamburgers and drinking alcohol and other poisons. Weak in mind and body, but his heart was good. To him I have given all. From a pale piece of pig's ear, I have made him Sinanju."

  Myoch'ong glanced about the room and saw a photograph of a pale-faced man, framed in gold, with western handwriting across the photo, and he asked Chiun if this were the white man of whom he spoke.

  "No," said Chiun. "That is an artist of great skill. That is Rad Rex who in the daytime dramas of the Americans performs with genius and brilliance in a great drama called As the Planet Revolves. That is his signature on the picture. In America, I have many important friends."

  Myoch'ong thought quickly, then again asked if Chiun would not come to Pyongyang to see Premier Kim Il Sung himself and receive an autographed picture of the premier which the whole village could appreciate and put in a place of honor.