Death Check td-2

by Warren Murphy

  Well, he would find her. He would find Miss Quick and Neat and break her arm. Just to let you know, baby, you ain't that good. No. Never mind. He would read the note and leave. And if he ever saw her again, he would kill her, because she would recognize him.

  He ripped open the envelope, not bothering to turn on the light but reading from the late afternoon sun coming vaguely through the windows.

  "Darling Remo."

  Oh, what a little bull-shitter she was. Cunt.

  "I never told you why I especially loved Conn MacCleary."

  Because he screwed you when you were three. "I was an ugly child, with many freckles. Youngsters as you know can be cruel." As opposed to women.

  "The other children tormented me because of my freckles. My nickname was the Hebrew children's equivalent of shit-face."

  Even then they knew.

  "One day, Conn heard the remark. And he looked surprised. 'Do you know,' he said, 'that a woman without freckles is like a night without stars?' And of course the other children said, but what about a girl? And he told them that a girl with freckles is like the dawn of life, the beauty of a new day, and she is so beautiful that like the shining sun, some people could not see the beauty right away. I guess that started it. I just always believed I would be beautiful and there is nothing like that to end the reality of it. That started my swelled head, of course. Conn probably had a bag on, I don't remember. But that sort of talk is easy to take. In any case, Remo, I grew up in a house where every so often my father would leave. And although they did not want that life for me, I followed it. I guess I had to follow it. Maybe I wanted to follow it. You see enough numbers tattooed on people's arms and hear enough stories and you know what you must do.

  "That is what has brought me here. One of them. Have you ever heard of Hans Frichtmann? The butcher of Treblinka? Here at the Forum.

  "I should not tell you this, but it is of no matter. I have already made so many mistakes since meeting you, telling you this in print probably will not matter. I love you, Remo. And if I saw you again, I would be hopelessly in love. And because you are who you are and I am who I am, this could not be. Maybe I am deluding myself into believing that you were not deluding me. If you were, I salute you. But this delusion, then, of your love, I will cherish until the last long night without stars.

  "I guess all of us carry our histories like crosses and our destinies like fools. But occasionally, we must succumb to logic. And the logic of our situation is that our love would destroy us. If we could only shake our duties like old dust. But we cannot. Mad dogs yet roam the world and for those we love, we must search them out, fighting all the time to keep our humanity despite the pressures to fight dogs like dogs.

  "We gave each other only an hour and a promise. Let us cherish that hour in the small places which keep us kind. You are kind and good and really very gentle. Do not let your enemies ever destroy that, darling. For as surely as the Jordan flows, we shall, if we maintain that goodness, meet again in that morning that never ends. This is our promise that we will keep. I love you, Remo.

  "Deborah."

  Well, shit. That's a woman for you. Of course, she loved him. How else could she call him kind and good and gentle? The utter silliness of it all. Remo read the letter again and felt very good. Then he tore it up, because preventions were precautions, and lit the pieces with a match. She was obviously finishing her assignment, and Remo would, as he painfully knew, only be in the way of it. So the simple thing was to go to Dayton, and then buy a ticket to Chicago, and there find someone who vaguely looks like you and who has a passport. Then kindly, good and gentle Remo Williams would work something on the poor bastard, and be out of the country and headed toward Israel and that town in the Negev.

  He would go there, find her parents, and wait. He would tell her parents to mention some phrase from the note. And she would come running home. CURE would find him though. Well, he'd work something out. All this think and counter-think had been a bother anyway. Hell, maybe he'd just find her now and they would both go somewhere.

  Remo watched the last scrap of paper burn and, leaving the cottage, accidentally bumped into the door. To hell with it. Everyone bumped into doors.

  He was tired now, very tired. The sun drained him and the walking drained him. He stumbled on the walk. He had pressed too hard too long and now he was running down. He was sweating now, for real. Real sweat from the afternoon heat. He stumbled again.

  He looked up and saw Brewster's office. He would rest there awhile and then leave. Stephanie was at the door, but he didn't feel like talking. He tried to pat her on the head. But inexplicably his hand missed and he fell full-length on the polar bear rug. He crawled to the couch, and pulled himself up onto it. In the cool of the air conditioner he drifted off. Out.

  Then there was the sleep. It was a deep, unconscious leaving. And there were dreams.

  Chiun, his aged Korean instructor, saying: "Do not pass this point. Do not pass this point. Do not pass this point."

  And other voices, Oriental voices. And Chiun was telling the other voices that he had not passed the point yet, so they must stand back. And Chiun wore black robes and a black headband and he was motioning that Remo should go to his special room and stay there. He should stay there until everything was all right. Chiun would sit with him. Remo had just worked too hard and too long. Remo should go into the room and Chiun would sit with him and talk to him.

  And since he wasn't doing anything important at the moment other than dying, Remo decided to go into the room where Chiun was waiting. He could always die. That was Chiun talking. Funny, he thought he had been saying that. But it was Chiun saying that. Remo could die later if he wished. He could die any time he wanted. Promise? Yes. Chiun promised.

  So Remo went. It was very cold in the room and Chiun looked very mean and stern. He was not here to punish Remo but to save him. But you promised I could die?

  You cannot die.

  I want to die.

  You may not. There are things you must do because your life is precious.

  Leave me alone. I want to die. You promised.

  But you are in the room now, Remo, and here you are

  not permitted to die.

  You're a liar.

  Yes, I lied to you. I hurt you.

  Yes, you do.

  I will hurt you more. For I am in this room with you and I am going to hurt you more. You will feel great pain.

  I do not want to hurt.

  Listen. You are dying. But I will not let you die, Remo. I prepared this room so that you should not die. That is why together we prepared this room. Your room, Remo. It holds your youth. Without the miracle of rest, you have lived a lifetime in three months. You are an old man, Remo. All that you took by your will and your effort has been taken back because you used it too long. But watch. We will do a trick. Come with me and do the trick. See the fire. It is hot. Hot. We will run through the fire. The trick is the fire. Come. Yes, it hurts, but come. I will go with you. Now. Into the fire.

  And he was roasting alive, in incredible, flashing pain, that seared his flesh. The flames burned his feet and licked at his legs, then engulfed his entire body in a whooshing roar.

  And Remo Williams was standing, yelling in the air-conditioned office and little Stephanie Brewster was beside him. The room smelled faintly of jasmine and the chill made Remo shake. Was it his imagination, the residue of the dream, or did he smell burning flesh?

  Remo rubbed his forehead, and felt something crumble over his eyes. It was charred hair on his eyebrows, curled white ashes that powdered in his fingers.

  Stephanie lost her terror and began clapping. "Oh, do that again. Do it again. Wonderful."

  "What?," asked Remo.

  "I didn't know you did magic."

  "What magic?"

  "You just lay down and shut your eyes and then you lit up almost like a light bulb. Oh, it was stellar. Stellar. Very unusual. That's redundant. Something isn't very unusual. It's unusual." />
  "How long was I here?"

  "Well, I didn't have my stop watch. But I would guess two or three minutes. You looked very tired when you came in, and then you fell, and your hands were cold, and I thought you were having a coronary. But I didn't know you did magic."

  "Yeah, kid. That's the biz. Look. I'm late for an appointment. Tell your dad that I'm going on vacation and I may not be back because the forum is too rough for me. Okay?"

  "I'll write it down," said Stephanie. With her awkward six-year-old hands, she manoeuvred a pencil over several pieces of note paper, in a handwriting reminiscent of someone designing a rope.

  "I paraphrased," she explained, starting on the first page which contained half a word. "Feelings of inadequacy impel Remo Pelham's resignation."

  "You've got it, sweets."

  "Well?"

  "Well, what?"

  "Aren't you going to kiss me goodbye?" And Remo Williams kissed Stephanie Brewster goodbye and she crinkled her nose, explaining that his face was hot.

  "That's the biz, kid," Remo said with lightness of heart, and he left with his very dry clothes crackling around him toward his appointment hi Dayton. Wait hi Israel for an agent to come home? Remo chuckled. He never would have made it out of Chicago. Well, senility is senility.

  His body hurt, like a very bad sunburn, but it was a good hurt. He was breathing well and moving well and relaxed and alive. He wished Deborah all the best and assumed she would be well because, after all, she was very lucky. She would have died on Deuteronomy. That's the biz.

  Still, he felt a little desire to read the note again, just once more. But it had gone up in flames and just as well. He would relax, go out of his head in Dayton, fornicate a bit, and maybe start slow in a week or two. Perhaps they would move Chiun out to him for one of the training programs. He would probably need that.

  An ambulance moved toward him from the other side of the circle. It couldn't be Ratchett. His house was in the other direction.

  Then there was the body.

  The ambulance slowed and a patrolman riding in front called out: "You must be Pelham."

  "Yes," said Remo.

  "You're the security officer. You want to meet me at the morgue?"

  "Well, I'm sort of busy," Remo said, and seeing the young policeman's face contort in shock, he felt somewhat stupid. "I'm clearing up some things here. I'll be with you later. I've had a hard day."

  "So has she," said the patrolman, nodding back to the receiving section of the ambulance. "Another OD. Your second in a month. I thought you people up here were brains, not junkies. Look. You've got to make it to the morgue because we're checking out stuff with the FBI. Hey, what happened to your face?"

  "I got too close to a stove."

  "Oh. Just a second." And to the driver he said, "Wait a minute."

  The policeman left the seat and sidled up to Remo and in confidential tones that the driver could not hear said, "Look, no matter what they say, the FBI goes out of its way to grab credit. You know what I'm talking about."

  Remo nodded.

  "They told us that if anyone saw you to tell you to meet them at the morgue. I know what they're doing. They want to get you away from the photographers over on the thirteenth green. That's where we found the body. Fuck 'em. You're the security officer. If you make it there fast, you can still get to see a reporter. Know what I mean. I mean they come in here to make a pinch or something that we can do just as good and they act so goddam nicey-nicey like they don't want the credit. Know what I mean?"

  Remo understood.

  "How does that make us look, right? And you. You're security officer. Both of us together don't make what those bastards make. Right? All we got is our respect. Right?"

  Remo nodded. "I'd like to see the body."

  "She's a shrink. Would you believe it? A shrink OD'ing on horse? What a bunch of dingalings. Hey, watch it with those stoves, fella. You look awful."

  "The body."

  "Sure. But she's wrapped."

  "Just a look?"

  "Sure. Hey, don't start up yet."

  The driver shook his head. "Where do you think I'm rushing to, man?"

  When they got to the rear, the patrolman confided that the driver's entire race was lazy. He opened the doors and with the effected cynicism of young policemen, said: "That's it."

  Remo saw the sheet covering the being on the folding stretcher. He knew it was Deborah. He reached into the ambulance and carefully, very carefully, folded back the sheet, controlling every nerve lest his hands break away. He could feel the tremble of energy course through him, and he channelled it into the precision he knew he need and he felt something rise in him, something trained and yet beyond training.

  And he saw the still face and the closed eyes and the freckles which had lit his night of loneliness and the lips which were now still and the arms that would never move again. He reached in and held her hand. In the light from the overhead bulb he saw on her arm something that was being surrendered, either by the chemicals he knew were in her or by the life that was no longer in her. The faint blue rectangle which looked as though drawn by a robin's egg crayon. They had been neat little numbers once that the master race used to catalogue the human beings they considered sub-human, even precious children who, for a brief moment, would light up a life, and having lit it, could set in motion that which would settle an old, old score.

  He squeezed her hand. It was hard, unyielding. Tenderly he opened the fingers and removed the object that she clutched. He looked at it, then put in his shirt pocket. Deborah was supposed to lead our agents to the killer. Now, in death, she would lead Remo to the master race who thought they were supermen.

  Well, then, he would let them know what one was. One who was not sure of where he had come from because he was left at a Catholic orphanage, one who, for all he knew, contained the seeds of all races. He might even be a pureblood German. If that should be, thought Remo, should they hold some special lien on viciousness, let that enjoy itself within him now. Chiun's ancient scripture flashed through his mind: "I am created Shiva, the destroyer, death, the shatterer of worlds." They would come to know the destroyer.

  And then Remo covered the stars for the last time and could have sworn that he gently shut the ambulance doors. He had been very precise about it, doing it very slowly to appear casual.

  But the bang and the crack of the door and the caved-in red cross, and the ambulance settling on its wheels brought the driver running from the cab. The patrolman yelled and Remo shrugged his shoulders.

  "These fuckin' nuts they got here," the patrolman yelled to the driver, while he stared at Remo angrily. "They're all screwballs. Even the cop. What'd you do that for, huh?"

  But he made no move toward Remo. And Remo again apologized, and walked away. He hoped he would arrive before the FBI. He had nothing against the FBI.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The man once known as Dr. Hans Frichtmann sat at his chessboard, staring at an endgame whose outcome was a foregone conclusion. Chess was a balm for the mind, the mind that could appreciate it.

  He had donned his smoking jacket and wore slippers, befitting a man who had done a hard day's work. Who could have expected that the little Jewess worked for that vengeful gang that did not know World War Two was over? They were insane. And now that she was dead, another would be coming for him. But he would be gone. The pictures would enable the Russians to control the scientists at the Forum, and that had been his mission. He had done his job. Naturally, it would not be adequately appreciated, but appreciation was for the days as a young man.

  He looked at the board again. Only a king left, against his black king, queen, two knights, a rook, and a bishop. But before the drug took effect the Jewess had said that no matter how bad things looked, there was a way. There was no way, of course.

  He was about to reset the pieces for a new game when the door to his study was pushed open. It swung back on noiseless hinges, then the knob cracked into the wall.


  It was the Brewster Forum security officer, looking as though he had climbed out of an oven.

  "Hello, Stohrs," Remo said to the man who was Brewster's Forum's chess instructor. "I've come for my game."

  "Well, not right now," Stohrs said.

  "Oh, yes. Now is fine." He walked in and closed the door behind him.

  "What do you want?," the chess instructor asked. "This is nonsense at such a late hour. You look terrible."

  "I want to play chess."

  "Well," said Stohrs with a sigh, "if you insist. Let me take your jacket."

  Remo took it off himself and as he did, the frail fibres separated and a sleeve was torn. He noticed that his arms were red and swollen.

  In the center of the room was the chess board on a metal stand on a bare parquet floor. Two heavy-armed oak chairs were attached to the table.

  "Sit down, Mr. Pelham, I will set the board."

  "No, this end game is fine. I will take white."

  "You cannot win with only a king."

  Remo reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew the white queen that Deborah's hand had surrendered to him in death. "I have a queen," he said. "That will be enough."

  Remo rested his arms on the chair arms. Under his right forearm, he could feel the chill of metal conducting heat from his arm into the chair. He picked up his king to examine the piece and as he did, looked down at the chair arm. He saw three small metal rings buried in the wood, with small holes, the diameter of needles, in the centers. That was it, Remo thought. A knockout injection.

  Stohrs had taken his seat opposite Remo. "An interesting conclusion," he said. "It was reached through the Silician opening. Are you familiar with the Sicilian?"

  "Yes, of course. He fought on the side of the Nazis. It was his responsibility to count the number of baby rapes committed by Hitler's thugs."

  Remo smiled, and resisted the impulse to reach forward and to crush Stohr's adam's apple between his fingers. Time for that. Deborah had been here. She had sat in this chair, and looked in Stohrs' eyes, loathing him and what he stood for, but there because duty demanded it. She had lost the game. And then her life. The life was gone. But Remo could salvage the game. And he could give her life and her death at least that much meaning.