Line of Succession td-73

by Warren Murphy

  Line of Succession

  ( The Destroyer - 73 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  Destroyer 73: Line of Succession

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Chapter 1

  Old Pullyang was the first to see the strange purple birds.

  Pullyang squatted in the dirt, smoking a long-stemmed pipe and letting the last warming rays of the day soak into his elderly bones. Smoking kept him awake, for he was the caretaker of the village of Sinanju, the birthplace of the sun source of the martial arts, which was also known as Sinanju. And being the guardian of the sleepy little town on the West Korea Bay meant unrelieved boredom.

  No one came to Sinanju who was not of Sinanju. Sinanju had no enemies, no natural resources, no desirable real estate. It did have a treasure, but few knew of it. Those who knew dared not seek it. The reputation of the Masters of Sinanju, a line of assassins that went back some three thousand years, was a greater deterrent to thieves than an armored division.

  Thus, old Pullyang squatted in the sun, smoking to keep awake and patiently awaiting the return of the Master of Sinanju, knowing that he had nothing to fear except nodding off. If he nodded off, the other villagers would note the day and the hour and inform the Master of Sinanju upon his return. Then Pullyang would surely be punished and one of them would be appointed in his place. The post of caretaker of the treasure house was much coveted in Sinanju for it allowed one to indulge in the chief village trait, which was a kind of studied laziness, without fear of scorn or punishment.

  Pullyang watched intently as the sun set over the surging waters of the bay, falling between the twin rock formations on the beach that were known as the Horns of Welcome. The ocean turned red. This was Pullyang's favorite time of day. It meant that mealtime approached.

  Just as the solar disk touched the water, Pullyang's pipe went out.

  Old Pullyang muttered imprecations under his breath because relighting the pipe meant a good deal of work. The stem was over four feet long. First he would have to reel in the bowl. Then he would have to stand up and walk over to one of the cooking fires for a smoking ember. That was the difficult part.

  Old Pullyang never got to the difficult part. After he had peered intently at his pipe bowl, he happened to look up. He saw the birds.

  There were two of them. They flew over the village in a languorous circle. At first Pullyang thought they were very near. Their wingspans seemed huge. But on closer inspection, he realized that they were very, very high up.

  That bothered old Pullyang even more. The birds were so high above that they were black against the sky, yet they still seemed large.

  Old Pullyang thought the large birds might be herons. They had long-billed heads and very long necks like herons. Their floating wings resembled heron wings. But they were too big for herons. It was a puzzlement.

  Clambering to his feet, he called down to the other villagers. He called them as a group, adding the words "lazy ones" because it made him feel good after squatting all day to call the others lazy.

  "Look!" he called, pointing to the sky. His long-stemmed pipe quivered in his hand.

  The villagers stopped their preparations for the evening meal and looked up.

  They all saw the lazily circling birds, black and indistinct because they were so high.

  "What are they?" someone asked fearfully.

  But Pullyang, who was the village elder after the Master of Sinanju, did not know.

  "It is an omen," he proclaimed loudly.

  "Of what?" asked Mah-Li, who was the betrothed of the next Master. She was very young, with lustrous black hair framing an innocent face.

  "Of evil," said old Pullyang sagely, who knew being ignorant was not the same as admitting it.

  The villagers gathered about the treasure house of Sinanju, which was built of fine woods on a low hill in the center of the village, because it represented safety. All of them watched the ominous birds. The sun's glowing rim slipped into the water, making it seem to bleed. It appeared as if the birds were dipping lower too.

  "They are coming down," said Mah-Li, her eyes wide.

  "Yes," said Pullyang. He could see their color now. It was purplish-pink, like the internal organs of the pigs they slaughtered for food.

  "They have no feathers," whispered Mah-Li.

  It was true. The birds were featherless. They had wings like bats-leathery purple wings that flapped and folded nervously as they circled lower, their hatchet faces twisting so that their side-mounted eyes could look down.

  Their eyes were bright green, like lizard eyes. They were definitely not herons.

  The children were the first to break and run. Naturally, the mothers ran after them, screaming. The men were next. There was a frantic exodus to the path that wound beyond the rocks to higher ground, away from the village.

  Old Pullyang turned to Mah-Li. "Go, child," he quavered.

  "You come too," Mah-Li urged, pulling on his skeletal arm.

  Pullyang struggled free, dropping his pipe. "No! No!" he spat. "Go! Away from here!"

  Mah-Li looked up at the purple birds, and she backed away.

  "Please!" she cried.

  Stubbornly Pullyang turned his back to her. Mah-Li turned and ran after the others.

  Old Pullyang was left alone. He shrank back under the curving edges of the treasure-house roof, where he hoped the circling birds could not see him.

  The birds swooped over the Horns of Welcome. Pullyang saw that their huge wings were bright and shiny like the plastic toys that were sometimes brought to the village from the cities. And then they settled, one on each horn, folding their wings close to their hairless bodies like creatures in mourning. They were three men high.

  Old Pullyang huddled on the ground. He was alone and the baleful green eyes of the birds-that-were-not-birds were fixed squarely on him. The birds did not move. They simply stared. The sun disappeared under the ocean, its dying rays backlighting the purple birds.

  Old Pullyang was determined not to leave his post. It was his duty. He would not shirk it. He would remain. No tattletale villager would ever say to the Master of Sinanju that Pullyang, the caretaker, had forsaken his sacred responsibility.

  Night fell. The two birds became two shadows with eyes. The eyes did not wink in those bony hatchet faces. They stared at Pullyang as if they had all eternity in which to stare.

  Pullyang set his teeth together to keep them from chattering. Let them stare. They could stare for all time. Pullyang would not flee. He wished he had gone for that smoking ember, though. His pipe would have tasted very good right now. More than anything, he wished his pipe had never gone out. Perhaps if it had not, Pullyang would not have looked into the sky and seen the circling birds in the first place. Superstitiously, he believed they had come to earth because he had seen them. He was convinced of this. It was the way they stared at him with their unwinking serpent eyes.

  Pullyang huddled before the door of the treasure house, a determined old man, and squeezed his eyes shut.

  When the moon came up, throwing the beach into relief, Pullyang could not resist checking to see if the purple birds still roosted in the moonlight.

  He saw that the moon had thrown long shadows across the rocky beach. The Horns of Welcome made those shadows. Then Pullyang noticed that the birds, perched on top of the Horns, cast no shadows.

  With a screech of fright, Pullyang ran-away from the treasure house, away from his responsibility, and most of all, away from his fear. He ran up the inland path after the others.

  Pullyang did not look back. He did not want the evil purple birds to follow him.

  The moonlight transf
ormed the village of Sinanju into a landscape of stark peace. Into this peace strode a man. He was a white man with a too-handsome face that was just beginning to take on the angular planes of maturity. Sea breezes tossed his long blond hair. He wore a two-piece garment of purple silk, a yellow sash belted around his middle. Serpents retreated from the path of his sandaled feet, as if in fear.

  He did not gaze in the direction of the Horns of Welcome as he sauntered cool and catlike up from the rocks and through the fragrant steam from the deserted cooking pots in the village square. He went directly to the door of the treasure house, called the House of the Masters.

  The door was locked. Not with a padlock or by a key, but by a cunning arrangement of wooden bolts concealed within the teak of the door. Reaching up, the man pressed two tiny panels simultaneously. They clicked, and a hidden locking mechanism slid from its receiver. Kneeling, he then removed a long panel that ran the width of the door. It revealed a wooden dowel in a recess. With great care he extracted the dowel.

  When he got to his feet, a firm push opened the door. A wave of must and candlewax rolled out to greet him. Wiping his sandals at the threshold, he stepped inside. No one must know he had been here.

  The white man looked around the room. Moonlight, coming through the open door, cast irregular shadows, causing the stacked gold ingots inside to gleam and striking fire off the open jars of cut jewels.

  The white man disturbed none of these things. He desired no treasure. Not all the money in the world would have mattered to him. It was too late for money, for anything. He walked into an inner room where there was no available light, disdaining the unlit tapers on the floor. He needed them even less than he desired the wealth of Sinanju.

  In this central room lacquered trunks lay about in profusion. He fell to his knees beside them, swiftly lifting each lid.

  The scrolls were in the fourth trunk.

  Carefully he lifted one out, undoing its gold ribbon. The parchment unrolled stiffly. He read the ideographs at the head of the roll. It was an old one, describing Mesopotamia thousands of years ago. He wanted the more recent scrolls. Squatting on the bare mahogany floor, the white man with the uncut yellow hair carefully opened scroll after scroll, reading and retying the ribbons until finally he found the ones he sought.

  He read them slowly, knowing that he had all night. The purple birds would keep the villagers away.

  After he had read the scrolls through, he took paper and pen from his yellow sash and, referring to the scrolls often, wrote a letter. Then he copied the text of the first letter exactly, but changed the salutation.

  With great care he retied the scrolls and restored them to the lacquered trunk.

  He stood up. His eyes were bright, like blue neon. He had succeeded. No one would know he had been here. Not even the Master of Sinanju.

  In his hands he held the letters containing the secrets of the present Master of Sinanju. All that remained was to mail them. And sign them. He had not signed them yet.

  Struck by a sudden inspiration, the man with the yellow hair pressed the letters to a wall and wrote one word at the bottom of each.

  The word was "Tulip".

  He reset the door mechanism on his way out.

  And then he disappeared down the shore road, past the Horns of Welcome, which awaited the rising of the sun, naked and forbidding. The snakes did not reemerge from their holes until long after he had gone.

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo and he was trying to catch the fly with a set of chopsticks.

  Remo sat in the middle of the room in which he had lived for nearly a year. He sat completely still, because he knew that the fly would not come near him if he moved. He had not moved in more than an hour. The trouble was, neither had the fly. It clung to the windowpane. Remo wondered if it was asleep. Did flies sleep?

  The room had bare beige walls, a television and videorecorder setup on the floor, and a sleeping mat in one corner. Remo sat on a sitting mat, which was thinner and made of reed. A small eating taboret stood before him and on it rested a bowl bearing the remains of Remo's most recent meal, duck in orange sauce. Remo had deliberately left it there to attract the fly, but the fly didn't seem interested.

  Remo could have gotten up and moved to the window faster than the fly could react to him. Before the fly's multifaceted eyes could register his presence, Remo could easily swat him. But Remo did not want to kill the fly. He wanted to catch it alive between the wooden chopsticks which he held in one hand.

  Eventually the fly stirred, spun on its multiple legs, and after brushing its wings clean, lifted into the air.

  Remo smiled. Now he would get his chance.

  The fly was fat, black, and flew silently. It looped around Remo and settled on the rim of the bowl filled with duck remains.

  Remo allowed the fly enough time to get comfortable. He carefully separated the chopsticks with his fingers.

  The door suddenly opened and the fly jumped. Remo's hand was already in motion. The chopsticks clicked shut.

  "I did it!" Remo said, bringing the chopsticks to his face.

  "What is it that you have done?" asked Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju. He stood on the threshold to Remo's room. He was a birdlike Korean in a canary-yellow suit with bell-shaped sleeves, very old, but with very young hazel eyes watching curiously from a face which might have been molded from Egyptian papyrus. What little hair he had collected in white tufts above his ears or trailed from his chin.

  Remo looked closer. The chopsticks grasped air. He frowned. "Nothing," he said unhappily. The fly was circling the ceiling.

  "So it appeared to these aged eyes," said Chiun.

  "Could you please close the door, Little Father?"

  "Why?"

  "I don't want the fly to escape."

  "Of course, my son," said Chiun amiably, complying with Remo's request. The Master of Sinanju stood quietly, his head cocked to one side as Remo tracked the fly with his deep-set eyes, careful not to move unnecessarily. The chopsticks hung poised in the air.

  The fly looped, dipped, and circled Remo curiously. "The poor fly," said Chiun.

  "Shhh!" hissed Remo.

  "Alas for the fly. It is hungry."

  "Hush!" said Remo.

  "If you would not sit so still," continued Chiun, "the fly would be able to distinguish you from the other garbage. Heh, heh. Then it could eat its fill. Heh, heh, heh."

  Remo shot Chiun a withering look. Chiun ignored him. Instead, the Master of Sinanju dug into a pocket of his suit and pulled out a handful of cashews. He ate one, chewing it as thoroughly as if it were a tough morsel of steak, and sampled another.

  Remo watched the fly as it spiraled down toward the bowl. The Master of Sinanju balanced a cashew on the index finger on one long-nailed hand. He raised the hand slightly, squinting at the fly with a single bright eye.

  When the fly was almost to the bowl's wooden rim, the Master of Sinanju sent the cashew flying with a flick of his thumb.

  Simultaneously, Remo's hand flashed out.

  "Got it!" Remo shouted, standing up. "Look, Little Father. "

  The Master of Sinanju hurried to Remo's side.

  "Let me see, Remo!" he said. "Oooh, how clever you are. "

  "Thank you," Remo said, holding the chopsticks so that he wouldn't crush the object in their grasp. "Not many people could catch a fly on the wing like that, huh?"

  "Not many," agreed Chiun, smiling benignly. "And you are not one of them."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Look closer, O blind one."

  Remo looked closer. Caught between the eating implements was a hard brown wingless object. Remo dropped it into his palm.

  "What is it?" he asked, puzzled.

  "Search me," said Chiun, nibbling on a handful of cashews. "Want one?" he asked politely, offering Remo his open palm.

  Remo realized that he held one of Chiun's cashews. He dropped it. "Why'd you have to do that, Chiun?" He demanded angrily. "I a
lmost had him that time."

  "O piteous disappointment. O miserable failure," mocked the Master of Sinanju. "Shall I leave the room so that you may end your wretched life from the shame?"

  "Knock it off," said Remo, settling back onto the mat. The Master of Sinanju walked over to the window. He came back to Remo's side, executed a deep bow, and offered an upraised palm.

  "What's this?" Remo asked sourly.

  "The object of your desire. O disappointed one," Chiun said blandly. In his wrinkled palm the fly lay immobile.

  "Forget it," Remo said dejectedly. "I don't want it anymore. It's dead."

  "It is not," said Chiun. "It is merely stunned. I do not kill flies."

  "Unless you're paid," Remo said.

  "In advance," Chiun agreed with a smile. "You will not accept this humble present?"

  "No," said Remo.

  "A minute ago you were most anxious to capture this insect."

  "I wanted to do it myself," Remo said testily.

  "Then do it yourself," said Chiun, throwing the fly into the air. It took wing and, somewhat unsteadily, orbited the room. "See if I care."

  "Okay," Remo said, coming to life. "Just sit quietly and let me handle this."

  "While you are handling it, as you say, talk to me, my son. "

  "About what?" asked Remo out of the side of his mouth. He had returned to his lotus position and sat still as a stone. "I have invested countless years of my life training a white man in the magnificent art of Sinanju, and I walk into this room to find my pupil engaged in nonsense."

  "It's not nonsense. It's a test of skill, catching a fly with chopsticks. The idea is not to hurt him, you know."

  "Do tell," Chiun said in a mock-American accent.

  "I got the idea from a film I rented."

  "What film?" asked the Master of Sinanju, genuinely curious.

  "This one," mumbled Remo, surreptitiously touching a remote control unit beside his leg. Across the room, the TV set winked on. Remo pressed another switch and the video recorder on top of the set started to play.

  Frowning, the Master of Sinanju watched a scene from the middle of a film. It showed a sweaty teenage boy waxing a car.