Death Therapy

by Warren Murphy

  “You look like you just crawled out of the sack,” Remo said.

  “You’re very perceptive,” Lithia Forrester said softly. “Any other observations?”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t very good.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “By your eyes. They’ve still got dots of light in them. If it had been any good, those lights would be out.”

  “You sound like an expert on putting out lights.”

  “I am,” Remo said.

  “I must impose upon you for instructions,” Dr. Forrester said.

  “Pick a time,” Remo said. “How about tonight? I’ve got nothing booked except a yell-in with the other looney-tunes in this place. Then we have our nude splash party from eight to nine. Then we play grab-ass from 9 until 9:30 or until Florissa gets tired of chasing me, whichever comes first.”

  “Let’s make it tonight,” she said. “My office, after dinner. Say seven o’clock.”

  “You’ve got a date,” Remo said. He leaned toward her as the car rolled to a stop in front of the ten-story main building. “Keep a light on for me.”

  “You’re the only one I’d let turn them out,” she said as Remo slid from the car. The door closed behind him and the car rolled off to the rear of the building where the parking garage and Lithia Forrester’s private elevator were located.

  Remo decided to pass up supper in the lab’s communal dining room, despite Chiun’s insistence that the vegetables were excellent, grown organically, and would give him the strength he needed for whatever mission lay ahead.

  “How about a dozen raw clams?” Remo said. When he saw Chiun’s look of disgust, he said, “Skip it.”

  Lithia Forrester’s secretary was no longer at her desk when Remo stepped from the elevator on the tenth floor. He approached the double oaken doors that marked the way to Lithia Forrester’s office and apartment and knocked.

  “Come in,” she called.

  Remo pulled open one of the heavy doors and walked inside. The lighting inside the office was subdued and the gathering gloom of dusk from the overhead dome cast a dullish light over the office, the kind of evening light that could vanish in seconds, Lithia Forrester had changed into a red silk hostess gown. She held two snifters of brandy in her hands,

  “Remo. I’m glad you came,” she said and stepped up to him, extending one of the glasses. He took it without enthusiasm, then raised it to clink against hers.

  “To turning off the lights,” she said, burying her face deep in the glass as she sipped from it.

  Remo raised the glass and let some of the liquid go into his mouth before carefully slipping it back into the glass. How long had it been since he had had a drink? The unaccustomed liquid burned his tongue and the inside of his mouth where it touched flesh, but it also kindled up memories of earlier days when Remo could drink a tubful if he wanted, and needed answer to no one but his head. That was another tiling Chiun had ruined for him. Liquor. Just as he had ruined sex by making it a discipline. The last time Remo had enjoyed sex had been with that politician’s daughter in New Jersey and that had ended in death.

  So now he made believe he sipped the brandy and he raised the glass to Lithia Forrester. “To turning off the lights,” he repeated. Well, maybe just one wouldn’t hurt. Get into the spirit of the evening. He looked over the rim of the glass at Lithia Forrester’s long, lush body wrapped in the rippling folds of red silk, her breasts rising high and proud over the sash around her waist, and again he felt that desire that went beyond lust.

  He raised the glass to his mouth, drained it all in one swallow. It burned going down, which was what good brandy should do, having been made to sip. But it had a different kind of burn to it, too, and Remo rolled the aftertaste around in his mouth before he realized the drink had been drugged. He remembered the lessons and lectures from his early days with CURE. There was no mistake.

  His brandy had been drugged.

  Instead of anger, Remo felt joy. He had been waiting for it—for something—to happen and now it was happening. They were coming. He would not have to beat it out of Lithia Forrester and he would not have to kill her… not just yet… not before he had made real love to her and had let her know what it meant to a woman to have the lights in her eyes go out.

  Remo could feel the drug now entering his bloodstream. He smiled at Lithia again across the glass and then she put her glass down on the desk and took his arm. “Come. Sit with me on the sofa,” she said. And Remo walked slowly with her, breathing deeply into his lungs, forcing his heartbeat higher, demanding that his heart flood his blood and the cells of his body with oxygen, hyperventilating to counteract the effects of the drug. Lithia Forrester led him to the leather sofa and put him down on it, then sat next to him. She took his empty glass from his hand and placed it on the floor, then took the hand and placed it on her thigh.

  The oxygen coursing through his body heightened his tactile sensations and he could feel under his fingertips the individual fibers of the silk and under the silk, the soft, smooth, seemingly pore-free surface of her leg. She turned him around and pulled him down so that his head was in her lap. He lay down comfortably as if to rest, but the brief flurry of drowsiness had passed; the oxygen had done its work and Remo was again in full control of his mind and body, the drug harmlessly converted by the body’s chemistry and by Chiun’s training into just another harmless substance. Remo allowed her to place his head just right in her lap, then he closed his eyes and pretended to drift off to sleep.

  He began to pull air slowly into his lungs to slow the beat of his heart, to counteract the brief flash of dizziness that always follows hyperventilation. Then he was breathing deeply, soundly, to all appearances fast asleep, and Lithia Forrester opened the buttons of his shirt and ran a finger down along his chest, making gentle, just-touching circles with her fingertip and nail.

  “You will listen to me and hear only my voice,” she said.

  Remo snorted slightly through his sleep.

  “What is your name?”

  “Remo… Donaldson,” he said slowly.

  “For whom do you work?”

  “The CIA.”

  “Who is The Destroyer?”

  “Me. Code name,” he said, intentionally slurring the words as if talking through a mouthful of sleep.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Plot. Against America. Have to find out who.”

  “Do you know who is doing it? Who is behind the plot?”

  “No,” Remo said. “Don’t know.”

  “Remo, listen to me carefully,” she said. “I’m going to help you. Do you hear me? Help you.”

  “Hear you.”

  “There is a plot against our nation. A plan to take over the United States. One man is behind it. His name is Crust. Admiral James Benton Crust. Repeat that.”

  “Admiral Crust. James Benton Crust.”

  “Admiral Crust is an evil man,” Lithia Forrester said. “He wants to take over the country. He must be stopped. You must stop him.”

  “… must stop him.”

  “He is aboard the battleship Alabama in Chesapeake Bay. Within hours he will begin his plan to conquer America. You must stop him. Do you know how?”

  “Know how… no… don’t know how.”

  “You will get aboard the Alabama. And you will kill Admiral Crust. Understand? Repeat it.”

  “Will kill Admiral Crust. Stop plan to conquer America,” Remo said.

  “You will do it tonight. Tonight, understand?”

  “Understand… kill Crust tonight.”

  Her finger played softly with Remo’s left nipple. She leaned forward and talked softly into his ear.

  “Do you like sex, Remo?”

  “Like sex. Yes.”

  “Would you like to have me?”

  “Yes. Have you.”

  “You will sleep now,” she said. “When you awake, you will feel refreshed. We have made love, Remo. You have shown me what real lovemaking is. You have put out the lig
hts in my eyes. It felt good, Remo. I never had it feel so good. When you wake up, you will remember how good it was. And then you will kill Admiral Crust and save our country. Now you will sleep. Sleep, Remo. Sleep.”

  “Sleep. Must sleep,” Remo said and again began to breathe the heavy breaths of a man on the verge of snoring.

  Lithia Forrester slid out easily from under his head and gently placed his head down onto the sofa. Remo lay there, feigning sleep, his mind racing. She must want him to kill Crust. Buy why? Had Crust found out something? Was he refusing to follow orders? Or was Crust her boss and was she just trying to get him out of the way?

  And then Lithia Forrester made a mistake—a mistake that told Remo that Crust was not her boss and guaranteed that Crust would not die at Remo’s hands. She walked to her desk in the now-dark office and as Remo watched through a slit eyelid, she picked up the phone and dialed three digits.

  “How was dinner?” she asked.

  Pause. Must be somebody in the laboratories, Remo thought. The three digits meant an internal call.

  “It’s all taken care of,” she said. “Just the way you wanted it.” So there was someone else. She had a partner, or even more likely, a boss.

  Pause.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. What was tomorrow? Maybe his killing of Crust was supposed to set something in motion?

  She spoke again. “I love you.” Then she hung up.

  Lithia Forrester was happy. Tonight, the meddlesome Remo Donaldson would be killed by Admiral Crust and his bodyguards. And then, tomorrow, Crust would provide the naval incident that was needed to get England and Russia to bid. It was perfect, a foolproof plan. She looked up at the dome that covered her office and laughed aloud, a high, piercing laugh that shattered the stillness of the office. Then she began to hum, the melody Remo had heard so many times in the last few days, the melody that somehow seemed to trigger disaster and death.

  And for the first time Remo recognized the tune.

  Lithia Forrester stood up and walked back toward the sofa. She stood in front of Remo, looking down at him, then opened her robe and pulled it back, exposing her naked body. Then she leaned forward over Remo, pressing a breast against his bare chest.

  “Remo,” she whispered. “Wake up.”

  Slowly, Remo began to stir and then to move. And then he opened his eyes wide, looked up and saw Lithia’s face just inches above him. He reached up and pulled her down to him and kissed her heavily on the mouth.

  “And that’s what it’s like,” he said. He looked at her eyes. “Go look in the mirror. You’ll see the lights are out.”

  “I know they are, Remo,” she said. “It was never so good before.”

  Remo stood up.

  “Will you stay? I want to do it again,” she said.

  “Can’t,” he said. “Have something to do. But remember, when you need a man, I’m around. I’ll be glad to turn your lights out again anytime.” He stepped up to her and slid his hands under her red robe and squeezed her behind, hard, pinching it enough to hurt.

  Then Remo turned and left, to go warn Admiral James Benton Crust that his life was in danger.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A CRUISE SHIP AT NIGHT, WITH its strings of lamps and its decks illuminated by floodlights, is an ocean-going prostitute. A Navy ship, on the other hand, is a working girl, poor but honest. No frills or frippery, designed for the long haul—for marriage, not a roll in the hay.

  The battleship Alabama was that kind of ship, Remo thought, as he stood on the wave-slapped dockside and looked out into Chesapeake Bay and saw the ship at rest four hundred yards off-shore, glinting dull gray in the glare of an occasional light, a mountain of metal in a briny wash.

  What he could not see at that distance were the dozen heavily-armed men, wearing the patches of Underwater Demolition Teams, prowling the ship, on special assignment from Admiral Crust to guard his person, to shoot first and ask questions later.

  Nor could Remo see Admiral Crust in the captain’s quarters behind the control room, lying in a large plush bed that the Navy insisted on calling a bunk.

  Admiral Crust’s thoughts were not on any purported threat to his life, nor were his thoughts any more military than those of any young sailor in a strange port on a weekend pass. Admiral James Benton Crust was thinking about getting laid.

  After five years, it was pleasant again just to think about it and to know that it was possible. Lithia Forrester had proved that to him that afternoon.

  Lithia Forrester. It would have been romantic, he thought, to say that if he never saw her again, his life would be empty. Romantic but inaccurate. She had given him the means again to make his life full and rich. And like any other good gift, its utility did not depend upon the presence of the giver.

  He was sure he loved her, but he was equally sure he could love another as well. He meant to put that theory to the test. To many tests, he thought with a chuckle.

  Down below the admiral’s cabin, sixty feet below, at the waterline, a small powerboat, its engine off, drifted quietly through the dark to the side of the ship, close in under the overhang where it could not be seen by anyone on deck. Remo Williams tied the boat to a heavy line trailing down from the bow of the ship. He leaped up from the seat of the small boat and caught the heavy line in his hands. Like an ape, he clambered up the water-slicked rope hand over hand. At the top, he caught a hand onto the railing of the deck and pulled himself up high enough to see through one of the cutouts in the steel hull of the ship.

  A man wearing a light denim jacket over a tee shirt and denim pants walked along the deck near Remo, cradling a shotgun in his arms. At a glance, Remo could see two other men, both carrying weapons, farther along toward the stem of the ship. Guards.

  Remo waited until the man at the bow walked slowly by him and had his back to Remo. Noiselessly, Remo hoisted himself up over the low deck wall and on silent feet raced the twenty yards to a door in the ship’s side. He slid inside quickly and found himself in a narrow corridor. Remo took off his white sports shirt and turned it around so that the buttons were behind his neck. At a fast glance, it might look like a tee shirt and with Remo’s dark slacks, he might look enough like a sailor to avoid rousing suspicion.

  Remo began to work his way up stairwells, heading for where he knew the captain’s cabin would be. After three flights of steps, the steps ended. He turned left into a passageway, then darted quickly back into the opening to the stairwell.

  A sailor with a shotgun stood in front of a door in the center of the passageway. That must be the captain’s cabin.

  Remo thought for a moment, then took a tank-type fire extinguisher down from the wall next to him. Cradling it in his arms like a baby, he began to whistle and quickly stepped off into the passageway, his feet wide apart, affecting the seaman’s rolling walk. Up ahead, the sailor sprang to attention as Remo drew near. Remo grinned, nodded at him and kept walking.

  “Hold it,” the sailor called. “Where are you going?”

  “Replacing that fire extinguisher down there,” Remo said, holding the tank high in his arms to hide his shirt. “It’s got to be recharged.”

  The man with the gun hesitated, then said, “All right. Step it up.”

  “Aye, aye,” Remo said and then took a step forward, drawing abreast of the man. He spun and tapped him alongside the head with the heavy galvanized tank of the extinguisher. The man dropped heavily to the floor. He would be unconscious for quite a while, Remo thought.

  Inside his cabin, Admiral Crust sat up on his bed. He was going to telephone Lithia Forrester. Maybe see her again tomorrow. If need be, even sign up for her stupid therapy program.

  Crust’s head snapped up as his cabin door flew open and a man slid in, closing the door rapidly behind him.

  “Admiral Crust?” the man asked.

  “Who’d you expect? John Paul Jones? You’ve got a hell of a nerve parading in here without knocking.”

  “Admiral, who I am isn’t important. I�
�ve come to tell you your life’s in danger.”

  Another nut come to warn him about Remo Donaldson, Crust thought. But then he looked into the hard eyes of the man facing him across the cabin and he knew that this was Remo Donaldson. Best to play it easy and gentle.

  “Come in, man,” the admiral said. “What’s this all about?”

  “Admiral, I believe you know a Dr. Lithia Forrester?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Well, she plans to kill you. In fact, she thinks I’m here right now killing you for her.*”

  “I’ve only met this Forrester woman twice,” Crust said. “Why would she want to kill me?”

  “She’s involved in some kind of scheme against our country, Admiral. I don’t know all the details of it. But somehow you’re in her way and she plans to kill you.”

  “And who are you? How do you know all this?”

  “Just a government employee, Admiral,” Remo said, stepping another pace into the room. “And it’s my business to know.”

  “What would you recommend I do?”

  “The guards are a good idea on the ship. Double them. And tell them no one is to be allowed access to you. At least for the next couple of days.”

  “Things will be safe in a couple of days?” Crust asked.

  “Things will be over in a couple of days,” Remo said, “Admiral, I don’t have much time. But believe me. This is important. Stay out of sight. Stay away from Dr. Forrester. Be careful. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you any more.”

  “Secret, hmmm?”

  “Top secret, Admiral.”

  Behind Remo, the door flew open and he felt a gun barrel pressed against the base of his skull.

  “Admiral. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, Chief, I am. What happened to the man outside the door?”

  “Knocked out. We saw him in the hall and decided to take a chance and bust right in.”

  “Good thing you did,” the Admiral said, still sitting on his bed. The phone at his elbow began to ring. He held up a hand to the three sailors behind Remo, indicating they should wait a moment, and lifted the phone to his ear.