Brain Drain

by Warren Murphy

  “I’ll tell you anything,” said Smith. “Why did you move me, though?”

  “To get the truth, Wasp.”

  “What wouldn’t I tell you, Nurse?”

  “We will see. Now what nationality is Remo?”

  “Who?”

  “Remo. Your man. I know that Chiun, the aged one, is Korean, But what is Remo?”

  “Remo who? Chiun who?”

  The pain was sudden, like flesh being peeled by white–hot irons. Smith screamed.

  “I’ll tell you. Stop. Please, stop.”

  “Do you remember Remo and Chiun?”

  “Yes, I know Remo and Chiun.”

  “Good. What nationality is Remo?”

  “I don’t know. I swear. He just sells us insurance at Folcroft Sanitarium.”

  The pain came again, gagging Smith with his own screams.

  “All right, all right: We’re CIA, Remo and I and Chiun. CIA. An intelligence center. We gather information on shipping and grain and… ”

  Someone seemed to be digging in Smith’s chest with sandpaper tools. He passed out. Then the lights came again.

  “All right.” The flat voice. “Let us try again. Now I know you are protecting something, and I understand why. But it is not you or your organization I am after. I am after a more even chance with Remo and Chiun. All I want to do is survive. I cannot survive with your man in the world. I can offer you a replacement for him if you wish, one who is almost as good, perhaps better. Myself. But you must cooperate.”

  “All right, but not in the chest again, please.”

  “You will find me very reasonable,” the nurse said.

  “We don’t know for sure what nationality Remo is. He was an orphan.”

  “An orphan?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is an orphan?”

  “That’s a person without parents.”

  “But a child cannot bear itself or rear itself. It cannot even walk until after one year of age.”

  “He was raised by nuns in an orphanage.”

  “Where did he learn to do what he can do?”

  “In the orphanage,” Smith lied.

  “Who in the orphanage taught him?”

  “The nuns.”

  The pain was protracted this time.

  “Chiun taught him,” yelled Smith. “The Korean.”

  “And what of Chiun?”

  “He is the Master of Sinanju,” said Smith.

  “They are teachers?”

  “No.”

  “Good answer. What are they?”

  “They are assassins,” Smith said. “Sinanju is a small village in Korea near China. It is the sun source of all the martial arts. The masters, for centuries, have rented out their services to support the people of the village.”

  “What services?”

  “They are assassins. They sell their services. Kings, pharaohs, czars, dictators, presidents, chairmen, all hire them at times.”

  “Could I buy Chiun’s services?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is Chiun creative?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What art does Chiun like?”

  “We have in this country soap operas. Stories in the daytime on television. I take it you’re not American, even if you don’t speak with an accent,” said Smith.

  “Soap operas, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “And are they creative?”

  “Not that I know of,” said Smith honestly.

  “But that is the strength of your species. Creativity. To be able to build from nothing, with new ideas.”

  “You must have had some good art in your country,” said Smith. “Every country has some art that is good.”

  “You are trying to get a fix on me, are you not?”

  “Yes,” said Smith in fear that the pain would start again if he lied. “I am.”

  “Then I will trade. Almost everything between people is trading. I will tell you I created that statue in the town square that everyone disliked so much.”

  “I didn’t dislike it,” said Smith.

  “You are not lying.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Smith.

  “The voice changes during a lie. You may not notice it, but I do.”

  “Were you trained in an art like Sinanju?”

  “No. I knew things that helped me teach myself other things. If I could be creative, I would fear nothing.”

  “Perhaps I can help,” said Smith, and for the first time he began to suspect who—or what—the nurse was.

  “Now you lie. What did you like about the sculpture?”

  “It had a balance and a form that appealed to me.”

  “Others called it a lifeless imitation of Moore.”

  “I didn’t think so,” said Smith. “It had enough life for me.”

  “I was not sure you would stop to look at it. It was a low probability but worth trying. What was that printout in your pocket?”

  “A payroll,” said Smith.

  “You are not lying, but your voice is changing somewhat.”

  “It is a payroll,” said Smith.

  “No matter that you lie. Could you tell Remo to kill himself and Chiun?”

  “No,” said Smith.

  “It does not matter. You have helped me do the job, Wasp.” The lights went off, and Smith looked out into blackness, filled in its center with a blue remnant that would disappear as his pupils adjusted. He breathed as deeply as he could and listened to the waves. He woke up again in a truck, and then, when the cool night air came over him again, he smelled hospital ether and felt the elevator going up, and when he woke up again, the sun was shining and there was the hall nurse.

  “How are we feeling this morning, Dr. Smith?” she asked. “Your wife is here to see you. You gave us a fright last night. Where were you?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Not at all,” said the nurse.

  “Well, I’ll be,” said Smith. He knew well the delusions of the wounded. Last night, he had been ready to swear that this nurse was an inhuman creature, a machine whose only purpose in life was to kill Remo and Chiun, and now here he was in his room, and here she was, and the room smelled clean and fresh–painted. Smith smiled and said again, “Well, I’ll be… ”

  “You most certainly will, Wasp,” said the nurse, and the voice was flat and mechanical.

  “Oh, my god,” said Smith, and he lapsed back into unconsciousness from shock.

  · · ·

  Meanwhile, Remo wrestled with a fear of his own. If Smith were captive somewhere, who was running the store? He asked that question of Chiun as they approached the gates of Folcroft Sanitarium. It was without any unusual number of guards, just a police pensioner at the gate, who said Remo needed a pass.

  “Lather your armpits,” said Remo.

  “If you’re going to be hostile, buddy, forget I spoke to you,” said Folcroft’s main gate protection, who went back to his small black and white television set. Chiun was missing his shows today, and he let Remo know.

  “So who’s watching the store?” asked Remo, as they strolled into the spaciously lawned interior of the old estate. Once before Remo had come back during an attempt to usurp control of the secret organization, and this time he noticed the protection was even less.

  “I know I am not watching my beautiful daytime dramas,” said Chiun. “What other people are watching is not my concern.”

  “Funny how this place seems to change. The walls look so much less formidable.”

  “Doorknobs are always up in the air to children,” said Chiun.

  “You know,” Remo said looking at the aged brick buildings, heavy with many years of ivy, “I’m not really sure what I’m looking for.”

  “But you think you will know it when you see it,” Chiun said.

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “You will never know it. Nothing is found that is not known before,” Chiun said.

  They strolled i
nto a large old building that Remo remembered, his first gymnasium, where he had met Chiun and begun learning the ways of Sinanju. There were basketball hoops on the sides now, and mats and tumbling bars.

  “I used to think guns and large numbers of men were powerful then,” Remo said.

  “You ate meat then, too,” said Chiun.

  “That was the hardest thing giving up. I used to dream of steaks. I remember how impressed I was when you cracked that two–by–four with your hand. I mean, just cracking a piece of wood and I thought it was wonderful. You know, I never understood half the things you told me then.”

  “Then?” said Chiun, cackling. “Then?”

  “Sure, then.”

  “Which explains why we wander around here uselessly, not even knowing what we look for. I tell you, Remo, you have caused me great disturbance in my peace.”

  “What are you worried for?” asked Remo. An exercise class, apparently of employees, filled the far end of the gym. They puffed back and forth across the wooden floor two times, then stretched their muscles in exercises that Remo recognized as contrary, that is, one exercise worked against another so that people strained instead of increasing in power.

  “Was I that bad, Little Father?”

  “Worse,” said Chiun. “You were a drinker of alcohol, an eater of meat, violent in your movements, and contemptuous and venal in your character.”

  “Yeah. What a change.”

  “Yes. You no longer drink alcohol or eat meat.”

  Walking to Smith’s office overlooking Long Island Sound, Remo told Chiun of the incident at the hospital.

  “What of that nurse?” asked Chiun. “Did she remind you of anyone you have met before?”

  “No.”

  “Were you concentrating when you met her?”

  Remo paused. “No. I was thinking of something the computer said.”

  “Well, we shall see,” said Chiun.

  “See what?”

  “I do not know. But we will know. We will know because we will not seek. We will let whatever looks for us find us.”

  “That’s a minor problem, Little Father. The whole organization may be going under.”

  “Wrong,” said Chiun. “Your problem is your life. Your organization’s problem is your organization’s problem. If it is not to survive, then it is not to survive. Have you heard of the Aztec kings? Where are they now? Where are the czars? Where are the pharaohs? They are not. The House of Sinanju survives because it does not wallow in foreign trivia.”

  “I’ve got a job, Little Father.”

  The receptionist in Smith’s office said he was not in that day.

  “Any calls for him?” asked Remo.

  “With all due respect, sir, that’s none of your business. He is in a hospital in Cape Cod. You might try telephoning him. He told me there were certain items he would be able to handle by phone, and if your… ”

  “When did you speak to him?” interrupted Remo.

  “This morning.”

  “What?”

  “Forgive him, child,” said Chiun. “He does not know what he is doing.”

  Remo phoned the hospital. It was true. There had been an incident the night before, but Cape Cod General could not be held responsible, and the patient wanted no notoriety.

  Remo and Chiun reached the hospital by late afternoon. Remo explained to Chiun that he couldn’t exactly go in. He might be recognized. He was, well, sort of running from the police yesterday.

  “Why were you running from the police? Are you trying to be a thief now, as well as an emperor?”

  “I can’t explain,” said Remo. They waited until nightfall and entered through an alley basement door and walked up the stairs to Smith’s room.

  The same nurse was on duty.

  “I want to talk to you,” said Remo.

  “Doctor Smith will see you now,” she said.

  “Hold,” said Chiun. “Do not go farther, Remo. Get away from that nurse.”

  “The old one remembers me,” said the nurse. “Breasts and makeup do not fool the old man, do they?”

  “What’s going on?” said Remo.

  “If you want to see Doctor Smith, enter,” said the nurse.

  “Remo, is that you?” came Smith’s voice from the room.

  “I’m going in,” said Remo, but he felt the long fingers of Chiun on his back. He tried to bend away from them, but they kept with him, and he skidded on the slippery floor wax.

  He saw the nurse make a move toward them, but then Chiun was up, circling in his deceptive slow movements, making almost imperceptible feints with the long fingers. The nurse, too, circled. Remo noticed that she limped.

  “Gracious,” she said in the flat mechanical voice. “I remember exactly. I think you have me, gook.”

  In Korean, Chiun ordered Remo to join in. For a nurse? The Master of Sinanju needed help with a nurse?

  Remo moved into Chiun’s circular pattern so that he was opposite the Master, with the nurse in the center.

  “Maybe you can help me with a paraplegic sometime, Little Father,” said Remo.

  “Do not joke. This one moves backwards equal with forwards and does all things with balance beyond men.”

  “I was pretty well programmed that way,” said the nurse. “But I still doubt that I could duplicate some of your moves.”

  “Who are you?” said Remo.

  “What is a better question,” said Chiun, and in Korean, he ordered Remo to hold.

  The nurse’s head spun around like the turret on a tank. She looked at Remo, smiling, her chin directly above her backbone.

  “Oh,” said Remo.

  “I see you remember,” said the nurse. “I wouldn’t attack right now if I were you, human. It would result in the destruction of Smith. Immediately.”

  “Remo,” called Smith. “Who’s out there?”

  “Do not move, oh, Emperor. We are saving your life,” said Chiun.

  “There’s somebody after you,” said Smith weakly. “I think it’s Mr. Gordons.”

  “You’re a great help,” mumbled Remo.

  “I see we are at an impasse, gook and orphan,” said the nurse.

  “What’s happening?” yelled Smith as loudly as his strength let him.

  “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning,” Remo yelled back.

  “There was a high probability that you should enter the room with Smith. Why didn’t you?”

  “Do not tell him, Remo,” said Chiun.

  “Let’s finish the old business now,” said Remo.

  “No,” Chiun said.

  “I see you are the better thinker, gook,” the nurse said.

  “One does not need special wisdom to see that,” Chiun said. “What do you want?”

  “Your destruction,” said the nurse.

  “Why?” said Chiun.

  “Because while you live you are a danger to me.”

  “We can share the earth.”

  “I am not here to share the earth. I am here to survive,” said the nurse. “You and your pale whelp are the one force I must destroy.”

  As the nurse spoke, another nurse passed them in the hall, nodded toward the nurse between Remo and Chiun and entered Smith’s room.

  Remo watched her go in. A moment later she came out. She walked away down the hall.

  “See, you may go in now,” the first nurse said in that flat voice. “It is safe now.”

  “Remo, stay away from that door,” said Chiun. “Why do you wish to destroy us?” he asked the nurse.

  “Because you two represent a force that has been continuing for centuries and centuries. Is that not right, gook?”

  “Correct,” said Chiun.

  “Then there is no reason that it might not be many centuries more. I have determined that I could outlast any country just by disappearing for a while, until it is no longer the country it was. But you humans of Sinanju stay around forever. Better we meet now, rather than I unexpectedly meet one of your descendants centuries
from now.”

  “Blow it out your transistors,” Remo said and moved into a two–line attack that could converge the maximum force upon the target. He needed only a piece of this thing to rip it apart. A normal blow to the heart or brain was useless. The motor responses could be anywhere. The last time they were in the creature’s stomach; now they could be under the nurse’s hat. Inside the white shoes.

  “No,” said Chiun to Remo. “Smith will die. Stop.”

  “He knows,” said the nurse.

  “What’s going on out there?” yelled Smith.

  “What have you done, thing?” said Chiun.

  “That is for you to find out. I am leaving, but remember, I will destroy you. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, thing, and let me tell you this. All that was made by man disappears. But man continues.”

  “I’m a new generation of thing, gook.”

  Remo watched, puzzled, as the nurse walked smoothly to an exit door.

  “It is good that you have learned to listen,” Chiun said.

  “What’s going on?” asked Remo.

  “First, how did it hurt Emperor Smith to begin with?”

  “Exploding sculpture,” said Remo.

  “Explosion,” said Chiun. He went to the entrance of Smith’s room and called in:

  “What is new in the room you are in?”

  “Nothing,” said Smith. “What’s going on?”

  “I smell something,” said Chiun.

  “Just some fresh paint.”

  “The whole room is painted?”

  “Yes,” said Smith.

  “And paint covers things,” Chiun said.

  “What’s going on?” asked Smith.

  “Nothing to fear. Just get well and do not leave your sickness room until we tell you it is safe.”

  “Come here and tell me,” said Smith. “Why are we yelling at each other like this?”

  “That, oh, Emperor, is impossible,” said Chiun. “You are in a trap. And I would imagine that that thing without imagination prepared a device similar to the one he used before.”

  “I don’t see any statue,” Smith said.

  “The walls, the room. That is the bomb. And I am sure should we have entered before, both you and your faithful servants would be injured, probably unto death.”

  “My God, what can we do?” Smith asked.

  “Get well and do not leave your room, for I fear your leaving will set off this device in some way. I do not know your modern methods. But of this I am sure. The paint covers death on four sides.”