The Eleventh Hour td-70

by Warren Murphy

  All those switches distorted Remo's voice almost beyond recognition.

  "Smitty?"

  "Who is this?" demanded Dr. Harold W. Smith in a voice so lemony it could be sold as air freshener.

  "Remo."

  "You don't sound like Remo," Smith said suspiciously.

  "Blame the phone company. It's me."

  "Identify yourself, if you are Remo."

  "Sure. I'm Remo. Satisfied? Or do you want me to hold a credit card up to the little holes on the receiver?" Remo snarled.

  "Okay, it's you," said Smith, who recognized Remo's insubordination, if not his voice. "Is a certain person with you?"

  "You mean Chiun?"

  "Good. That was a double check. I accept your identification."

  "If you're through," Remo said impatiently, "I want to report."

  "Have you neutralized the situation in Detroit?"

  "Not yet. Listen, Smitty. It's all kids doing this."

  "That was our understanding. That's why I instructed you not to kill anyone unless absolutely necessary. Your job is to frighten them off the streets and crush this activity once and for all."

  "That could take all night. But there's a better way to go, Smitty. I found out one person is responsible for these fires. An adult. A guy named Moe Joakley."

  "What is your source?"

  "I caught a little firebug in the act. He told me."

  "And you believed him. A teenager?"

  "He seemed honest."

  "Except for setting fires, is that what you are saying?" Smith said bitterly.

  "Look, Smitty. Don't go into a snit too. Chiun is on my case. He's getting tired of this roadshow. You've been sending us hither and yon, catching embezzlers and frightening shoplifters all over America. I thought we were in business to do more than pinch jaywalkers."

  "We are," Smith said. "But things are very quiet right now. There hasn't been anything big for you in three months."

  "So we're out swatting flies instead of vacationing?"

  "This Devil's Night is a big problem, Remo. It's been going on for years, but we've never had you and Chiun available on Halloween Eve before this. This is the perfect opportunity for us to nip this in the bud."

  Remo looked out into the night. Fire engines screamed in the distance. They seemed to be everywhere-or trying to be everywhere in Detroit.

  "I don't call trying to put out these fires after twenty years of mob rule 'nipping in the bud' exactly," Remo said acidly. "It's going in with defoliants after the forest has burned to the ground."

  "Call it what you will. It's your job, Remo. But you may be getting your vacation very soon."

  "Are you sure you don't want to send me and Chiun out to patrol the Mexican border for illegal grape pickers after this?"

  "Remo," Smith said suddenly. "We may be winning."

  "What do you mean 'we'? You're not 'we.' I'm on the front lines while you're sitting on your ass behind your computers pressing keys."

  "Remo, the lack of big assignments these past few months may signal the beginning of the end of America's need for CURE. At least, on the domestic front. The Mafia is on the run. Most of the big bosses are behind bars or under indictment. Corporate crimes have been curtailed. Drug use is declining. Crime statistics are down all over. I think the word is finally out: crime doesn't pay."

  "Really? You should visit Detroit. It's a city held hostage. And the guy responsible has been getting away with it for a long, long time. His name is Moe Joakley."

  "Just a moment," Smith said absently. Remo could hear the busy sound of Smith's fingers at a keyboard. "Remo. Listen to this: Moe Joakley, thirty-eight years old, born in Detroit, unmarried, former state assemblyman."

  "That sounds like the guy."

  "If what you've learned is true, we can end Devil's Night tonight."

  "Joakley's turned out his last kid firebug," Remo promised. "You can count on it."

  "Good. Contact me when your assignment is fulfilled."

  "That'll be within the hour. I can't wait to get out of Detroit. It's got some bad memories for me."

  Smith, remembering that Remo's last major assignment was in Detroit, said, "I understand." Remo had been assigned to protect Detroit's auto executives from an assassin. For a while, Remo had believed that the assassin was his own lost father. Now Remo knew different, but the experience had reopened a wound that Smith had thought healed over long ago.

  "Any luck on the search?" Remo asked.

  "I am working on it. I promise you," Smith said. "But it's an immense task. We know nothing about your parents, Remo. Whether they were married. Whether they are dead or alive. There are no records. This is one reason we chose you as our enforcement arm."

  " 'Every life casts a shadow,' as Chiun likes to say," Remo told Smith.

  "But shadows don't leave tracks."

  "That sounds familiar. Who said that?"

  "Chiun. In another context."

  "He's got an answer for everything," Remo growled, and hung up.

  Chiun was still there when Remo left the phone booth. His head was cocked like an inquisitive swallow's, his eyes fixed on some indefinite point in the night sky.

  "Little Father, answer me a question. If every life casts a shadow, but shadows don't leave tracks, what is the lesson?"

  "The lesson is that words mean what you want them to mean. And do not disturb me, orphan. I am contemplating the rising of the sun."

  "Huh?" said Remo. "It's not even midnight."

  "Then what is that pink glow beyond yon building?" Remo looked up. There was a pink glow. As he watched, it grew redder, with flickers of orange and yellow shooting through. Smoke boiled up.

  "Fire," Remo said. "Come on."

  "Are we firemen now?" demanded Chiun. But when he saw that Remo was running without him, Chiun lifted the hem of his kimono and ran like an ostrich.

  "You are running with a special grace tonight," Chiun said when he caught up.

  "Thank you."

  "A grace like a fat lady sitting on a cat," Chiun added. "Save the compliment. Your mind is not on your breathing. I am glad there is no one about to see how the next Master of Sinanju wheezes. Not that I care what whites think of you. It is important they do not judge Sinanju by your example, but by mine."

  "Blow it out your backside."

  And, their pleasantries exchanged, the Master of Sinanju and his pupil concentrated on their running. If there had been anyone with a stopwatch on hand, they would have been clocked at over ninety miles per hour.

  It was a wood frame building. The first floor was almost completely involved. Fire shot out of every window. It roared.

  On the upper floor, people hung out of the windows. A family. There were three children that Remo could see. Smoke was pouring out behind them, forcing them to hang their upper bodies out the windows just to gulp in breathable air.

  "Help us! Help us!" they cried.

  A crowd stood helpless on the sidewalk. Remo and Chiun shoved through them. The heat was intense. Remo felt the slight film of sweat from his run suddenly evaporate.

  "I'm going in, Little Father."

  "The smoke, Remo," Chiun warned.

  "I can handle it," Remo said.

  "I doubt that. I am coming with you."

  "No. Stay here. We wouldn't be able to carry them back through that smoke. When I get to the second floor, I'll throw them down. You catch them."

  "Be careful, my son."

  Remo put a hand on Chiun's shoulder and looked down into the old man's young eyes. The bond between them had grown great and the warmth of it made Remo smile. "I'll see you later, Little Father." And Remo was gone.

  Fire was a bad thing, Chiun knew. But Sinanju knew how to deal with fire. For what concerned Chiun was not flames, but the thick billows of smoke ascending into the sky. Smoke robbed the breath, and in Sinanju, the breath was all. It was the focusing point for the sun source that was Sinanju, first and greatest of the martial arts.

  Remo ran with
his eyes closed. His vision would be useless once he was inside, he knew. Instead he concentrated on charging his lungs with air. He took in the oxygen rhythmically, feeling for his center, attuning himself to the universal forces that enabled him to achieve total harmony within himself. This was Sinanju. That was what Remo had become under Chiun's tutelage.

  As he raced for the open, smoke-gorged front door, Remo seemed to see it all unfold before his mind's eyes.

  Remo had been a beat cop in Newark. Just a foot-slogging young patrolman with a tour of duty in Vietnam behind him. No one special. In fact, less special than most, because he had no family. His name was Remo Williams, but after a black dope pusher had been found murdered, Remo's badge conveniently beside the body, Remo's name became mud. Remo knew nothing about it. His badge had simply disappeared one night while he slept. The next morning he was being fingerprinted at his own precinct, and none of his fellow cops could meet his eyes.

  The trial was swift. Politically, the city wanted to bury this rogue cop who had beaten a black to death. It was a time of great social consciousness, and Remo's rights seemed to be the only ones that didn't matter. Remo could remember his lawyer trying to make a case for insanity by reason of sleepwalking. Remo had refused to lie on the stand. He'd never walked in his sleep in his life.

  They sentenced Remo to the electric chair. Just like that. Remo knew he was innocent. It didn't matter. His friends turned their backs on him. No one visited him on death row. Except for the Capuchin monk in brown robes. The monk had asked Remo a simple question:

  "Do you want to save your soul or your ass?"

  And he had given Remo a black pill to bite down on just before they strapped him in the chair and clamped the metal helmet, a wire leading out the top, to his shaven head.

  Thanks to the pill, Remo was unconscious when they pulled the switch. When he woke up there were electrical burns on his wrists. At first, Remo thought he was dead.

  He was assured that he was, but that he shouldn't let it get in his way. The assurance came from the monk in the brown cassock, only now he was in a three-piece suit, a hook sticking out of his left cuff. In the man's good hand there was a photograph of a tombstone. Remo saw his own name cut in the plain granite.

  "It's there waiting for you," said the monk, whose name was Conrad MacCleary. "If you say the wrong word."

  "What's the right word?" Remo wanted to know.

  "Yes."

  "Yes, what?"

  "Yes, I'm going to work for you," said MacCleary. And MacCleary had explained it all. Remo had been framed. MacCleary's handiwork. He was proud of it. MacCleary explained that he was ex-CIA, but now he worked for a U.S. government agency that officially did not exist. It was known as CURE. It employed only two people-MacCleary and a Dr. Harold W. Smith, also ex-CIA, not to mention ex-OSS. Smith was ostensibly retired, running a place called Folcroft Sanitarium. Folcroft was CURE'S cover.

  Remo had looked around the windowless hospital room:

  "This is Folcroft, right?" Remo had asked.

  "You got it."

  "I don't want it," Remo had said wryly. MacCieary offered Remo a hand mirror. The face that stared back was not Remo's own. The skin had been pulled tighter, emphasizing the cheekbones. His hairline had been raised by electrolysis. The eyes were more deeply set, and hinted of the East. The mouth thin, almost cruel, especially when Remo smiled. He was not smiling then. He didn't like his new face.

  "Plastic surgery," MacCleary explained.

  "What'd they use? Silly Putty? I don't like it."

  "Your opinion doesn't enter into it. You no longer exist. The perfect agent for an agency that doesn't exist."

  "Why me?" Remo asked, working his stiff facial muscles.

  "I told you. You're perfect. No family. No close friends. No one to miss you, Remo."

  "A lot of people fit that profile," Remo said flatly, sitting up in bed.

  "Not many of them with your skills. I did field work in Vietnam. I saw you in action once. You were good. With a little work, you'll be good again." Remo grunted.

  "You're also a patriot, Remo. It's in your psychological profile. Not many people feel about America as you do. You're getting a raw deal, but let me explain it in terms you can appreciate."

  Remo noticed that a break in his nose had been repaired. One improvement, anyway.

  "A few years ago a young energetic President assumed office and discovered America was dying slowly from a rot too deep to fix with new laws or legislation. The Mafia had its tentacles in corporate America. Drugs had infiltrated all levels of society. Judges were corrupt, lawmakers for sale. There was no solution, short of declaring permanent martial law. Believe me, it was considered. But it would have meant admitting that the great Democratic experiment did not work. The Constitution was about to turn into so much cheap paper.

  "But this President saw a way out. He created CURE, the ultimate solution to America's decay. The President knew he could not fight lawlessness legally. It was too late for that. So he came up with a way to protect the Constitution by breaking it. CURE. Empowered to secretly fight America's internal problems. At first, it was Smith and me. It seemed to work. But crime continued to grow. Things got worse. And the President who had given CURE a five-year mandate was assassinated."

  Remo remembered that President. He had liked him.

  "The next President extended CURE'S mandate indefinitely," MacCleary continued. "And gave us a new directive: CURE was sanctioned to kill. But only one man could be that enforcement arm. More than one would have turned America into a secret-police state. It requires a professional assassin. You, Remo."

  "That's crazy. One man can't solve everything. Especially me."

  "Not as you are now. But with the right training."

  "What kind of training?"

  "Sinanju."

  "Never heard of it."

  "That's the beauty of it. No one knows it exists. But it's going to turn you into America's indestructible, unstoppable, nearly invisible killing machine. If you accept."

  Remo looked at his new face in the mirror and then at the photograph of his grave.

  "Do I have a choice?"

  "Yes. But we'd rather you do it for America." And Remo had accepted. That was almost two decades ago. MacCleary had died. Remo later met Smith, and most important, Chiun, who had dodged a revolver of bullets Remo had fired at him as a test and then threw Remo to the floor like a child. Chiun had taught him Sinanju, at first reluctantly, then with passion.

  And Remo was using Sinanju now, racing into the roaring flames with his eyes squeezed shut, trusting in his training, trusting in the sun source.

  Eyes closed, Remo avoided the fire easily. His ears picked out the pockets of roaring flames. He moved away from them. Where he couldn't avoid them, he ran through them. But ran so fast the licking tongues had no chance to ignite his clothes. Remo could feel the short hairs on his exposed arms grow warm. But they did not ignite either.

  Remo found the stairs leading up to the second floor by sensing the furious updraft. His acute hearing told him there were no people on the first floor. There were no racing heartbeats of panic, no smell of fear-induced sweat, no sounds of movement. And most important, no smell of burning flesh.

  Remo went up the stairs, his lungs pent. He released a tiny breath with each floating step. He dared not release too much at one time because he dared not inhale. The greedy flames ate all the oxygen. His lungs were left with just smoke and floating ash.

  It was just as bad on the second floor. Remo dropped to his stomach, where the rising smoke did not boil, and quickly peered around. A long corridor with rooms going off on both sides.

  And the sounds of panic. Remo ran to them. He encountered a locked door, locked to keep the smoke and fire out. Remo popped the door from its hinges with an open-handed smack. The door fell inward like a wooden welcome mat.

  Remo opened his eyes again. They were here. The whole family. They were hanging out the windows and didn't see hi
m.

  "Hey!" Remo yelled, going toward them. "I'm here to help."

  "Thank goodness," the young wife said.

  "Save the children first," called the husband, trying to see Remo through the eye-smarting smoke. He was holding a two-year-old boy out the window with both hands.

  "Chiun?" Remo called down.

  "I am here," said Chiun, looking up. "Are you well?"

  "Yeah, Here, catch this kid," Remo said, snatching the boy from his father's arms and tossing him to Chiun.

  "My baby!" the mother screeched. But when she saw the miracle of a seemingly frail old Oriental catching her tiny son in his arms and offering him up for inspection, she was relieved.

  "The girl next," said Remo.

  And Remo lowered a girl in pigtails, dropping her into Chiun's upraised arms.

  "You're next," Remo told the mother.

  "Thank God. Who are you?" the mother sobbed.

  "I'm going to lower you as far as possible," Remo said, ignoring the question, "then drop you. Okay?" The flames had crept down the hallway, eating the wallpaper like a voracious animal, and were licking at the doorjamb. "Don't worry."

  Remo hoisted the woman out by her arms. Chiun caught her easily, lightly.

  "Now you," Remo told the father.

  "I'll jump, thanks." And he jumped. Chiun caught him too.

  Remo stuck his head out the window. "That's everyone?"

  "You forgot Dudley," the girl in pigtails cried. Tears were cutting rivers down her soot-streaked cheeks.

  "Right. Hang on."

  "Wait!" the father called up. But Remo didn't hear him.

  Remo recharged his lungs, but the smoke had already touched them. His eyes were tearing. He shut them.

  In the corridor, Remo danced past the flames, focusing beyond their angry crackle and snap, listening for a sound. Any sound. He zeroed in on a tiny, racing heartbeat. Remo followed the sound to the end of the corridor, where the smoke was thick. He pushed past a half-open door. The sound was low. On the floor.

  Remo hit the floor and crawled. He knew that children instinctively hid under or behind furniture when frightened. He felt a dresser, but it was flush to the wall. He knocked over a chair. Then he found a small bed. A child's bed. The heartbeat was coming from under it.