Warren Murphy: Timber Line

The Jeep came around a cutback in the road and started to climb again.

"I'll be damned," Stacy said aloud. Remo looked at him. Stacy was pointing toward the front of the Jeep. "Up there. Up ahead. Just where the road cuts back again. On the right-hand side of the road."

Remo had already seen what Stacy was trying to point out.

"I don't see anything," he said.

"It's gone now," Stacy said. "Hold on."

He shifted the wagon into four-wheel drive and stepped on the gas. The Jeep surged forward and slewed around the cutback. Halfway up the road to the next cutback, a tiny yellow figure with wisps of white hair, dressed in a flowing green kimono, with a bedroll slung across his shoulders, was moving along in an amble that approached a run.

"I'll be damned," Stacy said again. "Do you see that? Do you see that?"

"I see it," Remo said.

Stacy tapped the gas pedal again, and the vehicle leaped forward, passing the moving figure. He yanked the wheel hard to the right and the wagon spun toward the side of the mountain. At the last moment, he slammed on the brakes and the Jeep stopped ten feet in front of the walker, blocking his path. Stacy leaped out of the driver's seat and started for him.

The old man came to a halt, smiled benevolently at Stacy, and bowed from the waist. Stacy reached out to grab the man and somehow, he later decided, he must have slipped because the next thing he knew, he was picking himself up from the frozen roadway. The old man had walked around the purple Jeep and was meandering calmly up the hill. Stacy started to run after him but took only two steps when the pain in his side and lower back brought him to a trembling stop. "You," he half yelled and half gasped. "You."

The old man turned to face him.

"You wish to speak to me?"

"You," Stacy gulped and hobbled forward. "You."

"My name is Chiun. I am the Master of Sinanju. Stop pointing at me. It's not polite."

As he passed the Jeep, Stacy hissed to Remo, "Get out of there and let's get this guy. He probably did the shooting."

Remo shook his head. "He didn't shoot anybody."

"How do you know?" Stacy demanded.

"He doesn't shoot. He says that guns spoil the purity of the art."

"Oh," said Stacy, who had no idea what any of that meant. He was near Chiun again. "You're the master of what?" he asked.

"Sinanju," said Chiun.

"I don't care what you call yourself the master of. This is private property. You can't walk around in here. What are you doing here anyway?"

He started to grab for Chiun again, but Remo stepped in front of him. "That's not healthy," Remo told him.

Stacy started to move around him, but found that Remo, without apparently moving, had blocked his way again. They danced a couple of steps before Stacy, his eyes swimming with the pain in his side and back, stopped moving, bent over in the road, and threw up. When he had stopped retching, he pulled himself ramrod straight and pointed a finely cared-for finger at Chiun and said, "You. I want you out of my forest. Now. Do you understand?"

Chiun looked at Remo. "Does this one always shout like that?" he asked.

"Guess so," Remo said.

"I am glad I will be in the woods," Chiun said.

"Capture him," Stacy yelled at Remo. "Let's see what he's got in that bedroll. I'll bet we find a gun."

"No," said Remo. "You'll find a mat, a Cinzano ashtray, and a stolen pack of matches."

"Only because some ingrate refused to pack for me and to let me bring my few belongings with me," Chiun explained.

"Why a Cinzano ashtray?" Stacy asked Remo.

"He always carries a Cinzano ashtray. I don't know why," Remo said.

"Well, if you won't stop him, I will," Stacy said. "Careful, old man. I've got my black belt in karate."

"It didn't seem to do you much good before," Remo said.

"What do you mean?"

"He laid you out flat without even moving," Remo said.

"Nonsense." Stacy said. "I slipped; that was all. The footing on this road is treacherous." He looked again at Chiun and this time saw behind the benign peacefulness in the old man's eyes; there was something chilling and cold in the eyes and in the set of the face. He leaned toward Remo. "You know this guy?" he asked.

"He said he was the Master of Sinanju," Remo said.

"What the hell is that?"

Remo whispered, "Maybe one of those California fruitcake things. You know, clapping one hand in a hot tub and finding your soul through masturbation."

"What do you think he's doing here?"

"Sitting on the mountain top and contemplating the meaning of eternity," Remo said.

Stacy nodded. "Yeah, that's probably it. He doesn't look like our killer anyway. But he shouldn't be trespassing."

"No, but who's he going to hurt?" Remo asked.

Chiun turned and walked away. Stacy watched the tiny figure just turning around the mountain at the next cutback. "I guess you're right," Stacy said. "Who could he hurt?"

Remo shrugged.

Alpha Camp was two smallish greenhouses, a motor pool, a sprinkling of one-room log cabins, and a good-sized A-frame, like the kind that Angelenos build by the hundreds anywhere their gas-guzzlers can take them to escape urban congestion for a weekend.

The moon had come out, and snow had been falling for fifteen minutes when the Jeep wagon pulled into the camp. Stacy got out first and led Remo into the A-frame.

The sloping wooden walls of the house were covered with Indian blankets. There were two bearskins on the floor and comfortable-looking stuffed chairs and sofas. In the center of the left wall was a fireplace, and opposite the hearth a small kitchenette. Most of the structure was open from floor to rafter beams, but in the back of the A-frame were four private closed-in rooms, two stacked on top of two.

"Wait here, O'Sullivan, while I go find Dr. Webb and Brack," said Stacy.

"O'Sylvan," Remo corrected.

Stacy seemed to ignore that, and Remo reached out and squeezed his right bicep.

"O'Sylvan," he said again.

"Yes, you're quite right," Stacy said. "O'Sylvan, not O'Sullivan."

"Thank you," Remo said. He released Stacy's arm. "My name means a lot to me."

Stacy walked away from Remo and knocked on the door of the bottom left-hand room. A growling answered his knock and Stacy entered the room.

While the door was opening and closing, Remo heard a sound in the air, a sound that shouldn't have been there. It was a kind of combination of a dozen jet engines and an equal number of giant fans. Even after the door closed, Remo sighted his ears in on the sound, isolating it, trying to place it. To most people, the noise would not even have been audible, but more than a decade of Chiun's training had changed that for Remo. His nervous system was no longer that of a man's; instead, it was something far more refined, and compared with an average man's the way an average man's compared with an earthworm's.

The sound must be coming from somewhere behind the A-frame, outdoors. It was even more difficult to tell what was making the noise. Remo put it out of his mind and sprawled out in one of the chairs.

A few moments later, he heard the door behind him open and close. Three pairs of feet started across the room toward him. No one spoke. For an instant, Remo considered the possibility that they were planning to attack him, but he quickly rejected the idea. One set of footsteps came from a woman. Another set, a heavier walk, came from a man obviously in too much pain to even walk correctly, much less attack. The third pair — Stacy's — were different: skittish and aggressive at the same time, the type that would attack only when forced to by fright.

"Mr. O'Sylvan?"

The voice was a girl's. Remo turned to face her. She was tall, curvy, and pretty in a Norman Rockwell-tomboy sort of way. Her hair was bright, carrot-red, her eyes were blue, and her face was covered with freckles. She was wearing skintight jeans that revealed long, slender, well-muscled legs and a firm, high, rounded rear. Her breasts were large and looked firm.