Oil Slick

by Warren Murphy

  · · ·

  In what appeared to be a sanitarium in Rye, New York, on the shores of Long Island Sound, information on Dr. Ravelstein’s death, along with the death of Dr. Erik Johnson, found its way into the same file. This was done by the computer, which also noted that the substance on Ravelstein’s body was shale without oil.

  These facts hit the desk of the director of Folcroft, and he found a pattern in them.

  The pattern was energy. And death for those who found new sources of it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “WHAT DO YOU KNOW about oil and energy?”

  Remo Williams heard the question while focusing on his left pinky knuckle. He was seeing if he could make it jump. Not that there was any purpose in making one’s pinky knuckle jump. But it was either that or concentrate on what Dr. Harold Smith was telling him, and that was almost as annoying as looking at Dr. Smith who had picked the only straight-backed chair in the room and started talking nearly a half hour before about this scientist floating up in some river and that scientist going down some stairwell.

  Remo’s feet were propped up. Above his left pinky knuckle, through the hotel window, were the Rockies. Next door, Chiun was watching the last of The Rampant and the Beautiful. This month, half a dozen of the main characters were getting abortions—the viewer knew this because the best friends in the story were telling everyone else. They were supposed to be friends, because they looked very sad when they disclosed these things under the pretext of sharing problems. In real life, this would be called vicious gossip. In The Rampant and the Beautiful, it was called helping.

  Remo heard the organ music of the daytime drama through the hotel wall. He heard Smith’s sharp New England whip of a voice pick at him. He decided he loved his pinky knuckle.

  “What do you know about oil and energy?” Smith repeated.

  “Everything there is to know. Everything that will be known, and everything that was once known but is now forgotten,” said Remo, who started a race between his thumb knuckle and pinky knuckle, the loser to be unloved for the rest of the afternoon.

  “You’re joshing, of course.”

  “Would I fool the man who framed me for murder, then sent me out to kill?”

  “This seems to be a recurring problem on your part,” Smith said. “I thought by now that you understood it is necessary that you be officially dead to insure that there is no record of you anywhere. The man who doesn’t exist for the organization that doesn’t exist. It has to be that way.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Remo, allowing the index finger to join the contest.

  “Are you looking at your knuckles or listening to me?”

  “I can do both, you know.”

  “What are you doing with your knuckles, anyway? I’ve never seen anyone do that. That’s amazing.”

  “All you have to do is devote your life to it and you can master it, too, Smitty.”

  “Hmmm. Well, I suppose you have to occupy yourself some way. Seriously now, what do you know about oil and energy?”

  “Everything.”

  “All right. What’s a hydrocarbon?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Well, that settles that. Let’s start at the beginning and this time look at me.”

  So for another hour, Remo looked at the lemon-faced Smith while he detailed the problems of oil, both economically and criminally, and explained why he had decided that CURE must get involved, even though the situation was technically outside the organization’s jurisdiction. If the country came apart, he explained, it would make little difference whether the Constitution existed or not.

  “And energy is more dangerous in its aspects than atomic weapons, Remo.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Remo, looking at Dr. Smith’s pale blue eyes, while exercising the balance of his arms in continuity by the ever-so-slight touching of his fingernails. Every few minutes, Remo repeated, “terrible, awful, horrible,” until Smith said:

  “What’s horrible, Remo?”

  “Whatever you said, Smitty. This oil thing.”

  “Remo, I knew you were barely listening. Why do you continue in service? I don’t think you care about America anymore. You used to.”

  “I do care, Smitty,” said Remo, and now he was looking at that crusty New England face, with the majestic snow-crowned Rockies rising behind it, out past Denver. Behind Remo were the American plains and the big old cities. Behind Remo was where America had fought a civil war, losing more men than in any other war. Behind Remo was where bloody strikes and bloody company goons wrote labor history.

  He had been born back there in the East, and abandoned, which was why he could become a man who didn’t exist. Who would he feel required to contact again? Who would miss him?

  Folcroft Sanitarium was back there, and that was the second time Remo was born, and this time he knew more about life.

  “I continue to serve, Smitty, because that is what is right. The only freedom anyone has is to do right.”

  “The moral thing, you mean.”

  “No. Not necessarily. Those mountains behind you are the most mountain they can be. They are, and they are right. I must be that, too. It came to me while I was here. I am what I am. And what I am is ready.”

  “Remo. For a wise-guy Newark cop, you’re beginning to talk like Chiun. I don’t think I have to remind you that Sinanju is a house of paid assassins, centuries old. We pay Chiun’s village for his services. We paid for your training.”

  “Smitty, you’re not going to understand this, but you paid for what you wanted Chiun to do, not for what Chiun did. You wanted him to teach me parlor tricks of self-defense. He taught me Sinanju.”

  “That is absurd,” Smith said. “You’re talking nonsense.”

  Remo shook his head. “You can’t buy something you don’t understand, Smitty. You’ll never understand…Now why not get on with the assignment?”

  Smith smiled wanly and proceeded to outline the problem and the assignment.

  Problem: the Arab nations were putting a slow oil squeeze on the United States. American researchers working on oil substitutes had been killed.

  Assignment: a physicist at Berkeley is working on another oil substitute; see that he isn’t killed. Secondly, find out who is behind the killings.

  Smith explained it carefully. When Remo appeared to be secure in his knowledge of priorities—nowadays it was often more important whom he didn’t kill—Smith thanked him, zipped his flat, worn briefcase, and headed for the door without offering to shake hands.

  At the door, Chiun appeared, vowed the eternal loyalty of the House of Sinanju to the beneficent Emperor Smith, shut the door behind CURE ’s director, and said to Remo:

  “One does not give an emperor too much time. He begins to think he knows how one does things.”

  “I like Smitty. For all my problems with him, I like him. He is one of my people.”

  Chiun nodded slowly, and like a gentle blossom on a soft cushion of warm air, descended into a sitting position from which to speak. The golden kimono settled around him.

  “I have not told you this, but even though Koreans are my people, not all are wise and brave and honest, nor do all serve their discipline with integrity.”

  “No crap,” said Remo, feigning surprise. “You mean to tell me that all Koreans aren’t wonderful? I can’t believe it.”

  “It is true,” said Chiun and solemnly repeated a story Remo had only heard two hundred times. When the supreme power made man, he first put the dough in the oven and took it out too quickly. It was underdone and no good. That was the white man. He put more dough in the oven and to make up for his mistake in making a white man, he left the dough in too long and made the black man. Another mistake. But after the first two failures, he got it just right and out came the yellow man.

  And into this man he put thoughts. And the first thoughts were disproportionate to the human mind, breeding arrogance. And that was the Japanese. And into the next man he put thoughts tha
t were inadequate and stupid. And that was the Chinese. Since thoughts are very complicated, the supreme being kept trying and failing, and he created the piggy Thais, the corrupt Vietnamese, the…

  Chiun frowned a moment. “Never mind the details. The rest were pig droppings. But when the supreme being made Koreans, he got it just right. The right color and the right mind. But what you have just discovered through my tale was that not even all Koreans are perfect.

  And Chiun began listing the faults of all the provinces and villages until he came to one and that was Sinanju. But before he could finish, Remo did something he had never done before.

  “Little Father. Because of what Sinanju produced, both you and I may someday be killed. I know that you brought me here to make me ready to face that challenge, and now I am ready. But remember, that challenge comes from Sinanju. Not only from Sinanju, but from your house. From your very family. The better became the worse and both of us are still looking over our shoulders because of the evil that came out of Sinanju.”

  And with that, Remo turned and left the room in high discourtesy to the latest Master of Sinanju.

  Riding down in the elevator, he thought of the evil from Sinanju, which was Chiun’s nephew, Nuihc. Nuihc had been the son of Chiun’s brother. He would have succeeded Chiun as the Master of Sinanju, but he had turned to crime.

  Twice before, he had tried to kill Remo and Chiun. Twice, he and Remo had battled to standoffs. The second time, Chiun had warned Remo: “When we want him, he will find us.” It would, Remo understood, be their greatest challenge.

  And he knew that this was the reason Chiun had brought him here. To make sure he was ready for that challenge, which Chiun, in his unerring way, knew would come soon.

  Remo was ready; he knew what he was now, and what he had always been. But he allowed himself to wish that Nuihc had been drowned at birth in the North Korean

  Remo caught a cab to the airport, found out the schedule, saw the delays, and went right outside and hailed another cab.

  “Downtown,” he said.

  “Where downtown?” the driver asked.

  “You got the sentence wrong, buddy. Not where downtown, but downtown where.”

  “Okay,” said the weary driver. “Downtown where?”

  “Berkeley.”

  “You’re kidding,” said the driver. Remo pushed three one-hundred-dollar bills through the change chute at him, which killed all the driver’s objections but one. He wanted to go home first, to get a change of clothes and tell his wife where he was going.

  “I’ll pay for a change of clothes. You’re making the drive nonstop anyhow.”

  “But I’ve got to tell my wife where I’m going, you know.”

  Remo threw two tens into the front seat, but the driver explained that he and his wife were very close. They were very close up to fifty dollars, when she became nosy and possessive. Remo slept all the way to Berkeley. He arrived at the science building just in time to see the fourth floor of a large red brick and aluminum building come blasting across campus. Shards of glass sprayed a half-mile into downtown Berkeley, cutting only 227 undergraduates who had been manning booths to collect signatures for the legalization of marijuana. Ugly billowing black smoke belched from where the fourth floor had been. People started running toward the building. The nervous blare of a siren sounded far away.

  A dark-haired coed in tee shirt and faded jeans covered her face, weeping.

  “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.”

  Remo rolled down the cab window.

  “That’s the science building, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “What?” she sobbed.

  “Science building, right?”

  “Yes, it’s awful. How could anything like this happen?”

  Remo rolled up the window.

  “You should have made it faster through the Rockies.”

  “I got you here late, huh?” said the driver.

  “Yes and no.”

  “I just hope there weren’t people in there,” said the driver. He had the look of horror that comes when people realize that life is not as secure as they have themselves convinced. The look would disappear as the driver once again rebuilt the illusion that he was not in fact at the gates of death with every breath he took.

  “That’s awful,” he said. “To think it could happen here.”

  “Where should it happen?”

  “Well, somewhere else.”

  “Like death. Death happens somewhere else, right?” said Remo.

  “Well, yeah. Yeah,” said the driver. “It should happen somewhere else.” He stared as ambulances were loaded at the building, some rushing away with sirens on high, others taking a slow, even pace. They were the ones carrying the dead.

  “Whoever did that ought to be punished,” the driver said.

  “I think you’re right. Sloppy work should always be punished.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, dear driver to whom I am trying to give a greater tip than just money because he is an American of my own blood, there is one sure thing that will be punished in this world and that is doing something wrong—making a wrong decision or making a wrong move. That’s always punished. Evil? Well, maybe that’s just an extension of wrong thought.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” asked the driver, shaking behind the wheel. Firemen were lowering bodies from the charred holes in the fourth-floor wall. The driver was not looking at Remo, but at the bodies.

  What Remo was talking about was that the person who had blown up the science building had committed suicide just as surely as if he had put a gun to his own temple. He had made a mistake; he would be punished. But Remo was tired of talking and got out of the cab.

  The Denver cab driver badly wanted to get back across the Rockies. He presumed that in Denver university buildings did not go up in roaring blasts.

  Remo watched him speed away. But the driver was so shaken and confused that he picked up a fare at the corner, who got out just as quickly as he entered. As he backed out the fare stared at the driver as though he were insane. The cab drove off; the fare remained, standing on the corner and scratching his head, watching the out-of-state plates move away.

  Remo strolled onto the Berkeley campus, annoyed that the college scientist who had been working on a way to harness the sun’s energy was probably dead, and that somebody had been crude enough to use a bomb to try to destroy an idea.

  “It’s awful, it’s awful,” sobbed a woman in white laboratory coat. Her blonde hair had frazzled black ends, not the roots but the ends that had obviously felt the fire of the explosion. She was talking to a young reporter behind a fire engine that sat useless before the entrance to the science building.

  The reporter, a young man who looked as if he had slept in his gray suit, then rolled through lunch with it, was taking notes.

  “The FBI warned us about a possible attempt on the doctor’s life, but we thought it was just fascist propaganda.”

  “What did they say?” asked the reporter.

  “They said there might be an attempt on the doctor’s life and…oh, god…they examined the lab for bombs but there weren’t any and then they left and then, oh, god, it was awful…the wall came in. The whole wall. Like it was dust. And then there was the fire and then I couldn’t hear anything.”

  “You there,” said Remo sternly. “Who told you you could speak to reporters?”

  “I didn’t…” said the woman, but she couldn’t finish her sentence.

  “Not until we get everything cleared up first. Then you can talk to reporters.”

  “Who are you?” asked the reporter.

  “Strategic Security,” whispered Remo in hushed tones of confidence. “That doctor’s death may not mean beans. We already have everything we need. All they killed was another human being. I’ll talk to you later. This is off the record.”

  And the reporter, having heard a government official say that a human life was unimportant, contentedly moved on to
interview other people, secure in the knowledge that he had a contact who would not only hang himself later, but probably take his own department into complete embarrassment with him. He did not even bother to ask what Strategic Security was.

  Remo found out from the woman with the frazzled hair that the two FBI men had carried a briefcase with them into the doctor’s laboratory. It was their bomb-detecting equipment, she said. One was fat and one was thin, too fat and too thin to be FBI men, she thought at first, but she had seen their metal badges so they had to be authentic, right?

  Remo got her to promise she would say nothing about it to anyone. She must go home and rest. With an authoritative snap of his fingers, Remo pulled a patrol car over.

  “She’s in a state of shock,” Remo said to the two patrolmen in the front seat, while guiding the woman into the rear. “Take her home.”

  “Shouldn’t she go to a hospital for shock?”

  “Not for this kind. C’mon, move it. There’s been an explosion here. I’m going to speak to the chief right now.”

  The patrolmen, hearing the name that would absolve them of responsibility, drove away on a campus thoroughfare, and the chief of police, seeing an authoritative man in his thirties giving instructions to his own men, assumed that the man had some official standing. Especially when the man came over and assured him that nothing important had been damaged.

  “Just some deaths, but damn, we were lucky. Incredibly lucky. Whole experiment in perfect shape. Incredible. Lucky.”

  Remo watched a rubber bag with the remains of the people who had been in the wrong room on the fourth floor being wheeled to an ambulance. The wheeling was a gesture of respect for the human dead. What was in the bags were body fragments only. Much of what had been in the laboratory would be sifted for evidence and if there were no complaints about missing pieces of relatives—as there rarely were in these situations—any miscellaneous ear or thumb might be just handily flushed down the toilet. Only the funeral homes would continue the myth.

  “Where’s the highest ranking college official here?” Remo asked. The chief pointed to a pudgy loaf of a man who stood by himself, looking up at the fourth floor and nodding as if a workman were explaining a building modification to him.