Judgment Day td-14

by Warren Murphy

  "Did he say when I should do this?" asked Remo.

  "Oh, my goodness, no. He didn't say. But he sounded as if it was important, so I would guess he meant right away."

  "I see," Remo said. "Thank you."

  "Are you sure you have it right, Mr. Remo? I'll write it down if you want."

  "No, that's all right, Mrs. Smith. I'll remember it."

  He started to walk away, but stopped when Smith's wife called:

  "Mr. Remo?"

  "Yes?"

  "Is my Harold all right? He's not in any trouble, is he?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Good," she said and her face brightened. "He was sort of abrupt on the phone. Do you work with him, Mr. Remo?"

  "I used to."

  "Well, I feel better about that, because you're a very nice young man. Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?"

  "No. I'd better be going," Remo said.

  "When you see Harold, give him my love," the woman said to Remo's retreating back. He turned and looked at her, framed in the doorway, and for a moment he felt jealous of old penny-pinching Smith and ashamed of himself for what he would have to do when he found him.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  "It is done," Chiun said.

  Remo looked blankly toward Chiun and shrugged his shoulders.

  "I said, it is done."

  Remo shrugged again. Aboard the American Airlines Jet to Washington, Chiun reached over and plucked from Remo's ears the stethoscope-type earphones on which Remo was listening to a stereo music concert.

  "What, Little Father?" said Remo, rubbing his ears.

  "Nothing," Chiun said.

  "It must have been something for you to tear my ears off."

  "It was unimportant."

  "Okay. Call me when we get to Washington," said Remo. He lowered his body in the seat and closed his eyes as if to sleep.

  Chiun stared at Remo's closed eyes. "You will sleep a long time," he hissed, "before the Master of Sinanju speaks to you again."

  Remo opened his eyes. "What's the matter, Chiun?"

  "My history of the Smith dynasty is complete. Yet do you care? Even though you are in it? Do you care to learn how history will regard you? No. You want to listen to be-bops and to sleep."

  "Nobody listens to be-bops anymore," Remo said.

  "If anyone could, you would."

  "Let me see your history."

  "I don't know if I should," Chiun said.

  "Then don't," said Remo.

  "Since you insist," Chiun said, and he held out the long roll of parchment on which he had written.

  Remo sat up straight, took the scroll, unrolled it from the top and began to read. Chiun's handwriting was big and elaborate, decorated with swirls and loops, like a Palmer Penman gone berserk.

  Chiun's Mad Emperor

  In the middle part of the twentieth Western century, there was in a land across the big water, an emperor named Smith. He was also called Doctor Smith, as if this should be a title of respect, but few knew him and even fewer respected him.

  It was to this land, then called the United States of America, that the Master came those many years ago, and in the service of the Emperor Smith did find himself.

  But there was no wisdom in this Emperor Smith and he did not deal with the Master in truth and friendship, but made the Master instead responsible for trying to train baboons to play violins. Still, the Master worked with dignity and honor and loyalty for years for Smith, doing all that was asked of him, and doing it without words of anger, spite, or unceasing complaint (This was unusual in that land at that time, because the native people were much given to complaining of things which, was called kvetching. But this was not a surprise to the Master, since they were a people without culture and, in fact, produced nothing of value to the world except dignified stories of troubled people, which they showed to the Master on a special picture box that was then called television.) The Master remained in the service of Smith because it was an evil time in Sinanju and it was necessary that gold be sent to care for the poor and the sick and the young and the old.

  Among the many services the Master performed with honor for Emperor Smith was the training of a man as the Master's assistant, which is a kind of servant. To this man, the Master gave some of the secrets of Sinanju, but he did not give all of them because this servant was incapable of grasping them, but the Master did give him enough to teach him to come in out of the rain. This made the servant a man unique in that day and age in the land called the United States.

  Smith was not a truly evil emperor since he fulfilled his bargain with the Master and always provided the tribute due to the village of Sinanju, and it was right that he should do this.

  But toward the end of his reign, Smith began to lose his senses. The Master, of course, in his wisdom saw this but he did not confide it to anyone since in a land where no one has all his wits about him, Smith might have gone on for many years, a stark, raving lunatic, but apparently normal and still emperor.

  However, in quiet ways, the Master tried to help Smith by offering him advice on how to stay in power and how not to be overthrown by his enemies. But Smith would not heed.

  Then, one day, while the Master was away from Smith's palace on a most important mission, Smith disappeared. There will be those who might say that this was the Master's fault; that some blame should be placed upon him for this.

  But let all who read these words heed these facts and reject this complaint as untruth. The Master worried about Smith, but if Smith waited until the Master was away on a mission and took that precise moment to go fully insane and to wander out into the vast uncharted wildernesses of his country, then the Master could not be blamed.

  Is this not so?

  A word about the kind of emperor Smith was. While he was the emperor and himself paid the tribute to the Master of Sinanju, he was chosen as emperor by another man, who was a type of overlord chosen by all the people of that country in a national disgrace called an election.

  And this overlord chose as the new emperor a man whose mind was even more unstrung than Smith's.

  And this new emperor, whose name was that of Garbage, wanted the Master to do many things, most of them demeaning and all of them stupid. The Master would not do these things. Instead, he allowed his servant whose name was Remo, and who was unable to tell a crazed mind from a healthy one, to do those things.

  And that servant was called upon to destroy the mad emperor Smith, and many things happened before the matter was resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

  However, it was agreed by everyone, and even the overlord who was above the emperor, that the Master of Sinanju had covered himself again with glory and honor, even though in the service of a madman, and it was agreed by all the people of this land called the United States of America, that the Master was a man of wisdom and justice, and could not be blamed for what a crazed emperor might try to do when the Master was many thousands of miles away in a place they called at that time Grosse Pointe.

  All hail the Master of Sinanju.

  Remo finished reading and rolled up the scroll again.

  "Well?" Chiun demanded.

  "I'd give it a pretty good mark."

  "What is it, this pretty good mark?"

  "I'd give you an A for style and originality of thought, but only a C minus for content, and a D for penmanship."

  "Is that all good?" asked Chiun.

  "Yes," said Remo. "It's very good."

  "I am pleased," Chiun said, "because it is important that the world know the entire truth about this unfortunate incident of Smith's madness."

  "No worry about that anymore," Remo said. "Not now that you've got all the straight dope down on paper."

  "Parchment. I have written it for the ages."

  "You have done wonderfully," Remo said.

  "Thank you, Remo. It is most important."

  And then both were silent until they had left the plane, taxied to Washington and checked into the La
fayette Hotel under the name of J. Walker and Mr. Park.

  Remo had convinced Chiun that they would not stay in Washington for the night. He had thereby persuaded Chiun that he did not need to bring his usual seven trunks of robe changes. Instead, Chiun carried only a silken scarf which was filled with things that he insisted were necessary for his well-being, including his written record of the perfidy of Smith.

  Remo turned on the television set and he and Chiun sat on the floor to wait, but before the set had even warmed up, the telephone rang.

  Remo went to the phone.

  The voice that spoke to him was Smith's. For a moment, Remo felt almost pleased to hear the lemon-sour humorless whine again and to realize that Smith was alive. That feeling lasted only until Smith had completed his first sentence.

  "Trust you to ignore the air shuttle and catch a first-class flight to Washington.".

  "What have you done?" Remo asked. "Gone into the travel agency business?"

  "Not yet," Smith said. "Are you here to kill me?"

  "Those are my orders."

  "Do you believe I'm insane?"

  "I always believed you were insane."

  "All right. We might as well get on with it. In an hour, I'll be in Room 224 of the Windsor Park Hotel. That's just off Pennsylvania Avenue. It's now 9:36. I'll see you there at 10:35."

  "Okay, Smitty."

  All Remo heard was a click in his ear. It was annoying. He had wanted to tell Smith that his wife had been asking for him.

  Remo turned to Chiun. "Smith," he explained.

  Chiun rose slowly, his dark brown robe swirling about his sandaled feet.

  "And now?"

  "I'm going to meet him."

  "And?"

  "And do what you trained me to do."

  Chiun shook his head. "You should not," he said. "You have a contract with Smith. Who is this Mr. Garbage that he should order you to violate that contract?"

  "He is my new boss. My emperor."

  "Then he is emperor of a kingdom of fools. I am going with you."

  "I don't want you to, Chiun," said Remo.

  "I know you do not and that is why I am going. To protect you from your stupidity. Some day you will set down your own history and I want you to be able to set it down with truth and honesty, as I did, so that men will know you did what was best. If I do not go with you, you will do what is stupid."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because it is what you do best."

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The door to Room 224 of the Windsor Park Hotel was unlocked.

  Remo pushed it open and stepped inside. He might have had contempt for Smith as a skinflint, but he never figured him for a fool, so he moved in carefully, alert, ready to move if Smith had somehow booby-trapped him.

  Chiun followed Remo into the darkened room. Remo looked around and at the far right of the room, he could see a man sitting in a chair.

  "Close the door," came Smith's voice. "The light is on the left-hand wall."

  Instinctively, from ten years of habit, Remo obeyed. He closed the door first and then turned on the light. Two lamps on the dresser went on, illuminating the room.

  Remo turned, looked at Smith and laughed. Smith was sitting in a chair at the far-right corner of the room, next to a radiator. There were handcuffs on his wrists and the cuffs passed under one of the heat riser pipes of the radiator, so that Smith could not move unless his hands were freed. Then Remo noticed something else.

  There was a heavy cord in Smith's hands. It looped up to the far wall, where it passed through a screw-eye. The cord moved through a series of screw-eyes along the top of the wall, and then stopped at some kind of device over the door. The device was complicated looking, but it was simple enough for Remo to see that it included two sticks of dynamite.

  A damned bomb. Remo turned back to Smith, a complimentary smile on his face.

  "Nice going, Smitty," he said. "What makes you think that pile of junk will work?" he asked, nodding over his shoulder toward the bomb over the door.

  "Hello, Chiun," Smith said. To Remo, he said, "Explosives were one of my specialties in the war. World War II. It'll work."

  "What's the point?" asked Remo. "You know I could shoot you before you pull that string."

  "If you carried a gun. But I know a few things about you, Remo. One is that you never carry a weapon."

  "I can get you with my hands."

  "True," Smith said. "And as I fall, the weight of my body'll set off the bomb."

  Remo nodded. "True enough. Stalemate. Now what?"

  "I wanted to talk to you with a guarantee that you wouldn't do anything foolish or impulsive."

  "Like kill you?"

  "Exactly," Smith said. "Sit down on the couch, please."

  Remo moved across the room to sit on the sofa. Chiun still stood near the door, looking up at the dynamite.

  "Now what I wanted to talk about was this," Smith said. "Corbish is a fraud. He's a vice president of IDC who drugged me and took over CURE's operation. Without authority, without orders, without the right. Remo, he's dangerous. He could bring this country down."

  "He told me you'd probably say something like that."

  Remo said. "What about the letter turning authority over to him?"

  "I wrote that letter ten years ago, Remo. He tortured it out of me."

  "He said you'd say that too."

  "Do I sound to you as if I'm insane?"

  "You and Corbish both sound insane. So now what?"

  "There is one man who can tell you the truth," Smith said. "I haven't been able to reach him."

  Remo nodded, knowing the man Smith meant.

  "But you could reach him," Smith said. "And he could tell you the truth."

  Remo nodded again,

  "So what I want you to do," Smith said, "is go see him. Ask him. And then when he tells you I'm still in charge, we'll go and get Corbish the hell out of there before he destroys the country."

  Remo looked at Chiun, who was nodding. He was being taken in by this, he thought. Time to set him right.

  "Knock it off, Smitty," Remo said. "You know damned well that as soon as we leave, you'll be heading out the door."

  "That's idiotic, even by your standards," Smith said. "Do you really think I arranged to meet you in Washington so that I could try to escape from you? Arrant nonsense. But I thought you might think that. On the arm of the couch there"—he nodded with his head—"are the keys to these handcuffs. I can't escape unless you unlock them. Go. Find out. I'll be here when you come back."

  "That is good sense, Remo," said Chiun. "He will be here when you get back. And then you will have peace of mind in what you do, because conflicting orders are bad for the soul."

  "And if I say no?" Remo asked Smith.

  "Then CURE is gone and with it, maybe the country."s aid Smith. "And I don't want to live in a country like that anymore. So I won't. And neither will you," he said, raising his hands with the bomb pull cord between them.

  Remo got to his feet and dropped the handcuff key into his shirt pocket. "All right, Smitty. This time I'll do it. I'll go ask him. But watch out if this is a wild goose chase."

  "It isn't, Remo. Just go."

  Remo moved toward the door. "All right, all right, we're going."

  He stopped in the doorway and turned back toward Smith.

  "By the way, your wife sends her love."

  "Thank you," Smith said.

  Holly Broon, after firing her last desperate shot at Remo from a small Derringer she had kept concealed in her satin dressing gown, got to her feet.

  She did not believe Remo at all. That he had killed her father she did not doubt, but neither did she doubt that the killing had been ordered by Blake Corbish.

  Her body felt tired, languid, with the afterglow of lovemaking, but the pleasurable sensations quickly gave way to the frustration she felt at having missed Remo with the shot

  She retrieved her police special from under the mahogany cabinet,
walked into her bedroom and went to the telephone stand. She dialed a number and fell back on the bed while the phone rang.

  "Oh, hello, Mrs. Corbish. May I speak with your husband, please? Yes, just tell him this is Holly." Holly Broon could not resist the implied intimacy of the first-name identification. As she waited for Corbish, she thought again of Remo. He was a rare one, a fighter and a lover. It was an interesting combination. Perhaps he might yet be salvageable. A big corporation like IDC could use a man like that. And for that matter, why restrict it to IDC? The country could use a man like him, particularly if, as she hoped, one day Holly Broon would run the country.

  "Oh, yes, Blake, how are you? Fine. Blake, I've been thinking and perhaps we might have that board of directors meeting on schedule the day after tomorrow. But I'd like to talk to you about it. Yes, tonight. Suppose you drive over and pick me up? I'll be ready. We can drive somewhere and talk. Yes. Forty-five minutes will be fine."

  She picked a brown two-piece suit out of the closet. It was uncharacteristically modest, but it had the major, virtue of having deep wide pockets which could discreetly contain a gun.

  Corbish hung up the phone and noted that oddly his feelings were mixed. He should have been overjoyed but he wasn't. He pondered a moment, then realized what was wrong: he had looked forward to the chance to break down the nine members of the IDC executive board with the information he had gotten on them from CURE's files. It would have been fun, to pick them apart, one at a time, a secret at a time, until they were nothing but piles of bones at Corbish's feet.

  But Corbish had learned to take victory as it came. It had come now in the person of Holly Broon. Let it go at that.

  "So it's Holly, is it?" Corbish was jolted back to reality by his wife's abrasive voice. His wife was standing behind him, ever-present martini glass in her hand.

  "Yes, it's Holly. Holly Broon. She owns IDC."

  "It sounded like she thinks she owns you too."

  "She does, Teri. She owns everything and everybody in IDC. And soon I'm going to share the ownership of it with her."

  "Will there be any left for me?" she demanded. He pushed roughly past her. "Sure there will. Enough to keep you in gin and vermouth. Have another. Have another dozen," he said.

  Forty-five minutes later, Corbish was pulling into the driveway of the Broon estate. He started to park the car but Holly Broon came walking down the front stairs, wearing a dark suit and carrying a large handbag. He was glad now that he had worn a sports jacket and slacks. "Hello, Blake," she said, entering the car. "Hello, Holly. Anyplace special you'd like to go?"