Line of Succession td-73

by Warren Murphy

  "The doctor didn't have that problem when I brought him around. "

  "You are not old and feeble like me."

  "I also wasn't carrying a contract I wanted signed, sight unseen," said Remo, stepping into the elevator.

  "That too." Chiun beamed as the elevator doors closed on them.

  ***

  When the red telephone rang, the President heard it all the way down the hall in the Oval Office.

  He raced out of the office past Secret Service guards, who tried to follow him.

  "Stay there. I'll be right back. Diarrhea," he yelled. The Secret Service guards stayed put.

  In his bedroom, the President snatched up the red telephone.

  "Yes?" he said.

  "Smith here."

  "I've been trying to reach you for two days. Where the heck have you been?"

  "I've been indisposed. I'm sorry," apologized Smith. "Without going into details, Mr. President, I can now clear up the matter that is before us."

  "I'd like to hear the details," said the President.

  "They would take too long, and I doubt that you would believe them."

  "Let's hear the broad outlines, then."

  "I have identified the force behind the assassination attempts. The man calling himself Tulip is actually an opponent force my operation has dealt with in the past. His motive was revenge against my enforcement arm. He failed, and I have reason to believe that he is back in this country. He may try to complete the assassinations."

  "I'll double the security around the nominees."

  "No, pull them back. My special person is on the job. I've signed him on for another year."

  "And those personal records of his?"

  "You mean his scrolls?" Smith's voice lost its sharp edge.

  "Yes, I asked that their destruction be part of the new contract."

  "Of course. You're right. I had forgotten. I've been quite ill, but strangely, my mind feels quite sharp now. I don't know how I could have forgotten that detail. "

  "So what are the details of the new contract?"

  Smith paused. "As you know, I have full autonomy in undertaking contractual obligations," he said.

  "I'm not asking for veto power," the President snapped. "I just want to know what guarantees we have that this won't happen again."

  "I'll have to get back to you on that, Mr. President. But rest assured, this situation will not be repeated."

  The President grunted unhappily. "Very well. Anything else-or can't you tell me?"

  "The two bodyguards, the one called Adonis and the ninja. I have identified them. They are both this Tulip person. And he hired the killers involved in all of the assassination attempts."

  "My information is that one was a muscle-bound American and the other a short Japanese man. How could they be the same man?"

  "I told you you would not believe it."

  The President sighed. "The only thing I can say, Smith, is that you've found out more than all of the other intelligence services combined. On that score I have to go with you."

  "Thank you, Mr. President," said Harold W. Smith, and hung up.

  "I hate it when he does that," muttered the President as he replaced the receiver. "Sometimes that fellow acts like I work for him instead of the other way around."

  Chapter 34

  Remo Williams didn't like it.

  He had been following the Vice-President for several hours. The Vice-President was on a final campaign swing through the South. He traveled by limousine motorcade, and because a trailing vehicle would have been an instant tipoff, Remo could not follow in a car.

  He had sneaked into the Vice-President's trunk when no one was looking.

  Each time they got to a campaign stop, Remo sneaked out and tried to be inconspicuous as he kept an eye on the Vice-President. But no one had attempted to harm the man. Remo didn't think that anyone was going to. Back in Rye, Chiun had insisted that they split up, because, as he had put it, "There is no predicting where the Dutchman will strike first. "

  "Fine," said Remo. "I'll cover the Vice-President."

  "No, I will cover the President of Vice," declared Chiun.

  "If there's no predicting where he'll turn up, why do you want the Vice-President?"

  "Because you do," said Chiun.

  "He's mine," Remo had said firmly.

  "Very well. I will not argue. You can have him." Looking back, Remo decided that Chiun had agreed too readily. But it was still a coin toss where the Dutchman would strike, assuming Chiun was right. But what if he wasn't? What if Chiun was bluffing? Remo wondered if he shouldn't skip the Vice-President and find Governor Princippi.

  Then it came time for the motorcade to start again and Remo was too preoccupied trying to get back into the Vice-President's trunk without being seen to give the problem further thought.

  ***

  The Master of Sinanju knew it was just a matter of time. He had figured out that Governor Princippi would be the Dutchman's next target. It was not an equal coin toss as Remo had thought. It was more of a two-in-three chance that the governor would be next. The Master of Sinanju recalled that the Dutchman had ordered two hits on the Vice-President. But only one on Governor Princippi. To the Sinanju-trained mind, symmetry was instinctual. The Dutchman was Sinanju. Mad or not, he would, without thinking, seek equilibrium.

  Therefore the governor had to be next. And Chiun would deal with the Dutchman without risking Remo's life. Governor Princippi was in Los Angeles promising to institute free national earthquake insurance before a group of prominent businessmen. Chiun clung to a window of the high-rise office building where the meeting was taking place. The music told him that the Dutchman was coming. It was louder than before, more disoriented, as if a musician played from sheet music whose notes were frightened ants. Chiun hugged the window because he knew the Dutchman would come up the building's side and he did not wish to be seen first. The element of surprise was crucial for what Chiun intended to do.

  Jeremiah Purcell paused at the twelfth floor to look in at the lighted windows. It was night and most of the building was dark. The newspaper had mentioned the late-evening meeting between the governor and the Los Angeles business community. One of the lighted windows would be the correct one. But not this one. And so he reached up for the next ledge and the next floor.

  At the thirteenth floor he paused. None of the windows were lighted on this side. He made a complete circuit of the floor, walking confidently along on a ledge so narrow a pigeon would have scorned it.

  He had just turned the last corner of the ledge when the flutter of settling cloth caused him to swivel suddenly. Too late. The blow caught him in the right shoulder. With a subcutaneous pop, the bone separated.

  He grabbed his shoulder, setting his teeth against the sudden white-hot pain.

  "You!" he cried. "Where is your pupil?"

  "Look behind you," said the Master of Sinanju coolly. The Dutchman whirled again. But the kick came, not from the front, but from behind him. It struck behind his left knee, causing the leg to buckle. Too late, he realized the Master of Sinanju had tricked him. They were alone on the ledge.

  The Dutchman clung to the ledge. He looked up at the cold face of the Master of Sinanju.

  "The four blows?" asked Jeremiah Purcell through teeth that ground against each other.

  "You know the tradition?" Chiun asked him.

  "A Master of Sinanju shows his contempt for a foe by striking four blows and then walking away, to leave the vanquished one in death or mutilated humiliation. But I do not deserve such treatment. I could be a good pupil to you. Better than Remo. I could be the next Master of Sinanju. I could be the Shiva of the legends."

  "The next Master of Sinanju would not harm one such as Mah-Li," spat Chiun. "You deserve my contempt." And he kicked the Dutchman on the right kneecap just hard enough to open a hairline fracture, but not to fragment the bone.

  "I could be the Shiva of the legends, the dead night tiger who is white. How do you k
now it is Remo and not me?"

  "Remo is Shiva," said Chiun, zeroing in to strike the fourth and final blow.

  "No!" screamed Jeremiah Purcell. "I will not allow you to defeat me! I will throw myself off this ledge first!" His limbs like jelly, he allowed himself to slip off the ledge like an octopus sliding bonelessly over the side of a fishing boat.

  The Master of Sinanju snapped him back by his long hair. Just in time. He deposited him on the ledge.

  "I do not wish your death, only to see you helpless forever," Chiun said.

  "I am never helpless," said the Dutchman. "You forget my mind."

  Suddenly the Master of Sinanju stood, not on a ledge, but in the hand of a monster of steel and chrome. The building shook under his feet. The windows on either side of him turned into square eyes and focused cross-eyed upon him.

  A hand made of concrete and reinforced steel and larger than an automobile reached up for him.

  The Master of Sinanju knew it was an illusion. Buildings do not become monsters of metal. But he could not make his eyes see behind the illusion. He clutched the Dutchman's hair frantically. If Purcell fell, he would die. And so would Remo.

  Then the burning began. Blue flame-real flame-erupted at the tips of Chiun's long-nailed fingers on one hand. Chiun windmilled his burning hand, putting out the fire. He jumped to avoid the huge concrete paw swiping at him, and clung to the building. He could feel that, at least. It was his rock of safety. He could still feel the Dutchman's hair in his other hand. It jerked suddenly. Chiun's fist clenched tighter.

  When the illusions stopped, the discordant music died too. Chiun blinked. His hand still clutched the Dutchman's blond hair. But only the hair. It had been shorn off by sharp fingernails.

  Chiun was alone on the ledge. He scurried to the next floor, where the governor was holding his meeting. Peering in through the window, Chiun saw that the meeting went on undisturbed.

  Climbing down, he searched the street with frightened eyes. But there was no crumpled figure in purple lying in the street. The Dutchman had slunk off, alone, vanquished, to lick his wounds once again. Good. Perhaps this would truly be the end of it, Chiun hoped.

  In Atlanta the Vice-President's motorcade pulled up at a Holiday Inn for the night.

  Remo got out of the trunk as soon as the car was left alone. He called Smith from a pay phone.

  "Remo, I'm glad you called in," Smith said. "Chiun reports that he thwarted an attempt by the Dutchman to kill Governor Princippi. But Purcell got away. Chiun believes he's going to try for the Vice-President next."

  "I'm ready for him."

  "Sit tight. Chiun is on the way to join you."

  "Tell him to knock three times on the trunk of the Vice-President's limo. "

  ***

  The Dutchman limped for several blocks, searching. He was in a run-down business district in East Los Angeles. Somewhere there would be a hardware store. When he found one, he broke in through the back. Every hardware store had a vise. There was a big one in the back room, bolted to a workbench. He flopped his right forearm into the vise and closed it painfully with his other elbow. Setting himself, he yanked. The right shoulder strained, bringing sweat to his brow. The ball joint popped back into the socket. The pain was incredible. But he could use the arm now. That made resetting everything else that much easier....

  Herm Accord waited in the bar for nearly an hour. He was about to leave when the man walked in, briefcase in hand.

  He was a youthful guy with a dissipated face. His hair was like cornsilk, and cut in a punk style that made it look like the blond locks had been sheared by the ruthless swipe of a sickle.

  "You Dutch?" he asked.

  "Yes," said the blond man, limping to the table. He waved the waitress off.

  "What's the job?"

  "Tomorrow night the two presidential candidates are going to debate on national television."

  "Yeah, so what?"

  "I want it to go down in history as the unfinished debate. "

  "Like the unfinished symphony, huh? It's doable. But it's a little late to do anything with explosives. That's my specialty. "

  "Your specialty is death. You are ex-CIA. A renegade. And you have a reputation for doing the impossible. I don't care how you do it. Here," Dutch said, lifting the briefcase to the table with tired hands. "There's one million and fifty thousand dollars."

  "I said a million over the phone. What's the extra fifty grand for?"

  "You own a private plane. I need you to fly me someplace. "

  "Where?"

  "Home," said the Dutchman.

  ***

  Remo paced the roof of the Holiday Inn. Two floors below, the Vice-President worked on last-minute preparations for the great debate. There had been no sign of the Dutchman all night, and now morning was brightening the sky. The Master of Sinanju came up through a fire door. "Anything?" Remo asked anxiously.

  "No," said Chiun. "There are no suspicious persons in the lobby. Here, I brought you a newspaper. Perhaps if you focus your limited attention upon it, you will cease your incessant pacing."

  "At a time like this?" asked Remo, taking the paper without thinking.

  "We may be in for a long wait."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "The Dutchman has a long journey to this city. It will not help him that he now limps."

  "The four blows."

  "Three, actually," corrected Chiun, looking over the edge of the roof to the front entrance below. Remo noticed that Chiun seemed less alert than he should have.

  "I guess you figured if the Dutchman was crippled, I'll have a better shot at taking him alive," Remo suggested.

  "That possibility might have crossed my mind," Chiun admitted in a distant voice. "But my duty was to protect the governor. I could not kill Purcell, so I did the next best thing. "

  "I still want him."

  "I will let you know the moment he sets foot in this building," said Chiun.

  And because he was bored, Remo flipped through the newspaper. On page four, a boxed item caught his eye. Remo tore it out and called to Chiun.

  "Forget the entrance," said Remo. "The Dutchman isn't anywhere near here."

  Chiun asked, "How did you know that?" Then he caught himself. "I mean, how can you say that, Remo?"

  Grimly Remo gave the article to Chiun.

  The Master of Sinanju looked at the headline: "PTERODACTYLS SIGHTED OVER SAINT MARTIN."

  "They've been circling a certain ruined castle since last night," Remo said. "When people try to photograph them, the developed pictures show only empty air. I don't suppose you'd have any idea what castle that might be?"

  "You tell me," said Chiun unhappily. "You are the deductive genius."

  "The castle on Devil's Mountain where we first encountered Purcell," Remo said. "His home. And the place where he's gone to hide and heal. The place where you figured he'd go all along. Am I right?"

  "A lucky guess," said Chiun, turning the clipping into confetti with fussy motions of his fingernails.

  "I'm going to Saint Martin."

  "That does not worry me. What worries me is: will you return from Saint Martin?"

  Chapter 35

  When the plane banked over Saint Martin, Remo could see Devil's Mountain, a black horn of evil thrusting up from one end of the beautiful French-Dutch island in the Caribbean.

  "There it is," Remo said, pointing to a tumble of white stones high on a ledge overlooking the bay.

  "I see no purple terrorbirds," sniffed Chiun. He was thinking how much Devil's Mountain reminded him of Mount Paektusan.

  But they saw the pterodactyls when the taxi driver brought them as far as he dared to go. The rumor on the island was that the former inhabitant of Devil's Mountain, the feared Dutchman, had returned from the dead to haunt his ruined castle.

  Remo paid the driver and they started walking.

  The pterodactyls arose from the ruins and made lazy circle over the ledge. They ignored Remo and Chiun, who had
begun to scale the sheer side of the volcanic mountain.

  "Remember," warned Remo. "You had a shot at him. Now it's my turn."

  As they climbed, the music seeped into their consciousness, the subliminal sounds of the Dutchman's disordered mind. The sky turned purple, a deeper purple than the pterodactyls. As if envious of the richer hue, the pterodactyls lifted silent wings and flew into the heavens. They were absorbed by the lowering purple sky.

  "I think he's playing," said Remo. "Good. That means he doesn't know we are here."

  "He does not know anything," said Chiun worriedly. "Look! "

  A gargantuan face broke over the lip of the ledge, like a whale surfacing. It leered, huge and cruel with slitted hazel cat's eyes and a pocked yellow complexion.

  "Nuihc," Remo whispered.

  "Listen," Chiun said.

  "Father! Father!" The voice was thin and sad, but the vocal violence of the cry carried alarmingly.

  "It's Purcell. What's he doing?" Remo wanted to know.

  Chiun grasped Remo's wrist with clawlike hands. "Listen to me, my son. I think we should go from this place. "

  "No way. The Dutchman is up there. I haven't come this far just so you could talk me out of this."

  "He has gone over the edge."

  "He did that a long time ago," Remo said, shrugging off Chiun's grasp. Chiun's hands reasserted themselves. "Over the edge into madness. Observe. Listen to the music. "

  The face of Nuihc, smiling with silent cruelty, lifted like a hot-air balloon. Hanging beneath it from cables, like a wicker basket, was a tiny human-size body. The Nuihc balloon floated into the purple sky. It popped and was gone.

  "Looks to me like he's just playing mind games," Remo said.

  "Mark the sky. It is purple, the color of the mad mind."

  "Fine. It'll make him easier to handle."

  "He has nothing to lose now," Chiun warned.

  "You can stay down here if you want to, Chiun. Either way, you stay out of it."

  Chiun let go of Remo's arms. "Very well. This is your decision. But I will not wait below. I have already stood at the base of Mount Paektusan. This time I will accompany my son to the summit."

  "Fair enough," said Remo, starting up again.

  The higher they climbed, the steeper the mountain became. The air was warm, not cooled at all by the freshening sea breeze. Beyond them, the water stretched blue-green toward infinity. But above, the sky hung suffocatingly close, like a velvet hanging.