Warren Murphy: Timber Line

Word of the meeting came to CURE in the usual fashion — isolated bits of data that individually meant nothing, until some intelligence had arranged them into a pattern and a picture: The secretary to the head of a large holding company in Southern California made airline reservations for her boss to fly to Cleveland for a two-week winter' vacation, then quietly tipped off the publisher of a financial insiders' newsletter; the publisher thought he was working for the CIA and passed the information along to a bland, well-mannered voice at an 800 area-code telephone number. A pimp in Las Vegas was told to send an assortment of two dozen of his prettiest boys and girls to Cleveland for a convention, and he mentioned it in passing to the cop he had on his pad; the cop informed an assistant district attorney he was reporting to; and the assistant D.A. thought he was reporting to the FBI when he passed this item along to a well-mannered voice at an 800 area-code telephone number. A Cleveland distributor of fine wines received a rush order for several cases of a particularly rare, typically expensive French wine, and to get the wine quickly, he bribed a customs inspector; another customs inspector reported the bribe to an 800 area-code telephone number, thinking that the number was a direct link to the White House.

And the information all found its way into the massive secret computer banks at the Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York. There, a tall, lemony man with a dry, well-mannered voice — Dr. Harold W. Smith, the public director of the sanitarium and the secret head of CURE — one morning pushed some buttons on his desktop computer console and watched the pattern emerge.

He shook his head slightly and almost allowed himself a look of satisfaction. If he was right, CURE would be able to take a major step against one of the most powerful organized-crime groupings in the country. He punched instructions into the computer for more information.

Then he sat back and waited.

The normal quitting time for most people came and went. Dr. Harold W. Smith stayed at his desk.

The normal dinner hour passed.

As he had countless thousands of times, he ordered a prune-whip yogurt with lemon topping from the sanitarium kitchen and quietly nibbled at it while he waited. Early evening turned into late night, and late night into early morning before the small amber indicator light flashed on his desk.

He raised the console from the center panel of the desk, depressed a handful of keys, and watched as pale green letters and numbers began appearing on a dark green background. Smith studied them for a moment, then reached for the telephone.

That had been more than a week before, and at the end of the line was Remo and his assignment. Mass murder.

That was what depressed Remo. Not the killing itself. He had long since stopped thinking about the taking of a target's life in any terms other than whether or not his technique was as clean and pure as it should be. Remo was an assassin, nothing more, nothing less, the Destroyer, Shiva incarnate, and a professional.

Killing did not bother him. But having to kill did. Having to live in a place and time where so many truly deserved to die horrible deaths, where so many had well earned their terrible fates, was what depressed Remo.

And he knew with certainty that he was going to botch this assignment. He felt it inside. His rhythms were not tuned in to what he must do, and so he knew that he would do the job badly.

He was alongside the pier now, and with no apparent effort he leaped from the water's surface to the roadway that ran along the top of the structure.

There were tiny shards of ice coating his black skin-hugging T-shirt and his black chino slacks. Remo brushed the evidence of his walk from his clothing and looked around.

A hundred yards away, half a dozen men stood guard at the entrance to the pier. Though it was public property, the pier today was off limits to all but invited guests.

Remo shook his head. Guards never turned around.

Told to watch a road, they watched a road. Told to look up, they looked up. But they never turned around to check if anything was sneaking up on them from some other direction.

Remo strolled over to the low building with the red neon beer signs in the window. A small enclosed porch shielded the door from the cold and the wind. Two more guards huddled together inside the porch, trying to keep warm.

When they saw Remo, they jumped apart, and their hands reached toward their pockets, fingers curling around their guns.

"Hi, guys," Remo said with a smile.

"If you don't have a reason to be here, you're dead," one of them growled.

"Bye, guys," Remo said. Still smiling, he leaped lightly up the two steps, between the two men. Their hands, wrapped around big, heavy automatics, were out of their pockets now, but they couldn't fire without hitting each other. Each had the same brilliant idea. They raised their automatics overhead, planning to slam them down on Remo's skull. Remo immediately shot his two hands upward, catching each man in the armpit. Like twin Lake Erie versions of the Statue of Liberty, the guards' arms froze in position over their heads. Before their arms came down, Remo's did. And he buried them quickly and deeply into the guards' sternums. Their bones cracked inward, and the two men began to tumble forward. Remo caught each man and lightly pushed him back into place, so that both were leaning against the wall — but on either side of the door. They looked like a matched set of bookends, Remo thought, as he slipped inside the building and walked toward the bar.

The room was crowded wall to wall with people.

As he approached the bar, Remo waved to get the bartender's attention, but two oversized men blocked his way. They dwarfed him. Remo was not truly large, perhaps six feet tall, perhaps not, and lean, weighing less than 160 pounds. He had a dark, ordinarily good-looking face and dark, tranquil eyes that women found captivating. The only sign that Remo might have been more than he seemed were his wrists, which were extraordinarily thick.

Remo faced the men who blocked his way to the bar. "Excuse me," he said to the bigger of the two.

The man turned and belched in Remo's face.

Remo shook his head. "I was afraid you'd do something like that."

"What's that?" the big man asked, and belched again. The smell of bourbon and half-cooked red meat poured from his mouth.

"Never mind," Remo sighed, and touched the middle of the man's chest with his index finger. The man fell to the floor, screaming. "Help me, help me. It's my heart; it's my heart."

The second big man bent over to tend to him, and Remo moved to the bar.

"What'll you have?" the bartender asked.

"Make mine sarsaparilla, pardner," Remo drawled. When the bartender went to get it, Remo realized the man was the type to take everything literally. No sense of humor. "Never mind," he called out. "Just make it ice water."

Behind Remo, a crowd started to form around the dead man on the floor; Remo heard their ugly muttering. The second large man pointed to Remo's back, and an arm reached over and grabbed Remo by the shoulder. Then the arm dropped with a loud thump. The owner of the arm still stood, until he looked down to the floor and saw his arm lying there, then he, too, fell to the floor.

"Don't anybody else bother me while I drink my water," Remo said. "All this exercise makes me thirsty." The bartender placed the water in front of Remo, gingerly, as if ready to bolt away as soon as glass touched countertop.

"Hold it," said Remo. "This water's not from that cesspool out there, is it?" He nodded toward the front of the building and Lake Erie.

"No, sir. Bottled water. Poland. Best there is, sir."

"Okay," Remo said. He took a sip. A woman behind him screamed. Remo stepped out of reach of another man's arm. To watch him, it did not look as if he had moved at all, but suddenly the other man was sliding along the length of the bar, knocking over drinks, and upsetting patrons as he went.