Warren Murphy - Power Play

The door to Chiun's room was unlocked and Remo stepped inside. The room was empty.

He turned to leave and then stopped as he heard voices from the adjoining room. He stepped to the connecting door between the rooms.

He heard a telephone being replaced on the receiver.

Then he heard Baya Barn's voice. "Now we can leave," Rachmed said. "And start our new lives together."

"Yeah, sure," come Theodosia's voice in answer. Her voice was surly and bitter.

"What is it, sweet missssss?" asked Baya Bam. "What troubles you?"

"Look, Rachmed," she said, very briskly. "Our business deal is over. You were supposed to con Wesley into going ahead with the sun energy project. You did it. That's it. Cold cash. Nothing else."

There was a sinking feeling in Remo's stomach as he listened, and then the feeling seemed to swell back up and turn into a bitter burning anger.

"But our love?" Rachmed said. Remo heard Theodosia laugh. Suddenly everything had become very clear.

"Love?" Theodosia said. "Come off it."

Remo slammed the heel of his hand against the door. It shuddered on its hinges, then swung back into the next room.

"That's right, Rachmed," Remo said as he stepped inside. Theodosia turned to him, her face startled. "She never loved you. You're not her type. No man is. Isn't that right, Theodore?"

Theodosia ran toward him. "Oh, Remo," she said. "I've been so worried." He could almost hear her mind clicking as she thought of what story might work. "We heard the assassin had been seen over here and we..."

"Nice try," Remo said. He pushed her away, hard, and she fell back onto the bed.

"Ssssir, you are no gentleman," Rachmed hissed.

"Quiet, pimp. You're so dumb you don't even know this bull dyke conned you."

Rachmed looked stupidly confused.

"That's right," said Remo. "Conned. She used you to keep Pruiss involved in the solar energy thing. Then she kept telling him the oil people were after him, and when she got him fired up enough, he signed a paper she gave him that turned everything over to her if anything happens to him. Isn't that right, Theo?"

She looked up at Remo and a hard glint came into her deep brown eyes. She nodded.

"But our love?" Baya Bam pleaded to her.

"Where'd you get him?" Remo asked. "He's got a loose upper-plate."

"He comes cheap," Theodosia said. "You don't. But you don't have any more brains than he's got. When did you catch on?"

"I didn't," Remo said. "When you were cold during sex, I should have gotten a clue about you. But I didn't. It was only today. Flamma said something about the lesbian around Pruiss. She called you 'Theodore.' It didn't register. You know I came here to save you? I still didn't know until I heard you two talking."

The woman glanced at her thin gold wristwatch.

"Waiting for someone?" Remo asked. "Maybe your assassin?"

Theodosia shook her head, a vicious smile spreading her lips wide.

"No," she said slowly. "He's not coming here. Right now, he should be walking into Wesley's house to do the job right this time. No near-misses like I contracted for the first time. In about five minutes, I give or take a couple, Wesley should be dead."

Remo smiled back at her. "Fat chance," he said. "He's got to get past Chiun first. He's got as much chance to swim the Pacific."

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Theodosia said. "Chiun is on his way here. I just talked to him on the telephone, and told him we had spotted the assassin here. He was worried you might get hurt so he said he'd be right over."

Conned. Even before she spit out the awful cold truth, Remo knew. He had been suckered into leaving Pruiss alone, suckered because he had trusted this woman and feared for her safety.

He turned and ran from the room. There was no time to spend expending his anger. Judgment would have to wait.

Behind him, he heard Theodosia laughing. "Too late," she called. "Too late."

Remo floored the gas pedal of the ambulance as he raced back toward the Pruiss mansion. He realized just how much he was the son of Sinanju now, because he had no feeling for Pruiss, he did not care if the publisher lived or died, but his job was to keep him alive and like Masters of Sinanju for uncounted centuries, he just wanted to do his job.

The puzzle sorted itself out in his mind as he drove. Theodosia had hired the assassin, not to kill Pruiss, but to injure him and frighten him. She had hired the bodyguards just to make it look good and when Remo and Chiun had arrived, she had been forced to hire them too. Rachmed's faith healing was supposed to keep Pruiss interested in solar energy, because Theodosia needed that to justify the story she was peddling Pruiss — that the oil interests were after him. And she hammered that story and hammered it and hammered it, until finally she convinced Pruiss and in anger, he turned everything over to her if he should die, with orders to make sure solar energy went through.

If he should die. Right now, that assassin was supposed to be changing "if" to "when."

Only another mile. Almost there.

Chiun had walked from the front door of the house and down the driveway. The assassin had watched him go. The old Oriental had looked both ways, then turned and began to walk rapidly in the direction of the town.

The Wa assassin allowed himself to wonder. Who was this old Oriental? Did he too have some knowledge of Sinanju? What was his relationship with the young, big-mouthed American? As Chiun walked away, the assassin shrugged. His job was to get rid of Wesley Pruiss. But then he would stay around. As a bonus, not for pay but for pleasure, that American would go too. And, if he got in the way, the old Oriental also.

He walked across the practice green toward the front door of the house, where Pruiss now lay, alone. It was not true, the Wa knew. The American had said he struck only from behind, but that was not true. The Wa worked from behind when he had to, for silence, but he would rather work face to face.

He liked to see the faces of his victims, see the shock and horror when they saw him, watch it change to pain and the dumb look of death when the knife struck home. The face and eyes always looked dumb, puzzled, just before death came. That is what he wanted to see now.

He hoped Wesley Pruiss was sitting up in bed so he could see the Wa enter the room. Then the Wa could watch the growing terror as he spoke the words, "I have waited for you," and then the fright and shock as he drew his knife, and Pruiss's desperate crippled efforts to escape, or to plead for his life, and then the whir as the knife flashed across empty space toward the bed and the satisfying thunk as it bit deeply into the throat, crushing Adam's Apple, severing nerves. Then the look of dumb stupidity on the face as death arrived.

And then there would be time for the American who said he was from Sinanju, Sinanju. What was it anyway but a foolish legend?

The Wa moved silently up the stairway of the empty house, his light footfalls making no sound on the thick carpeting. He walked down the center of the hall. His belt of knives was slung low around his hips, in the way Wa assassins had carried their weapons from the time of the very first Wa.

He paused in the center of the hallway. He heard only one sound, that of Wesley Pruiss breathing. It was a soft low sipping of air, the kind of mouth breathing most Americans inflicted on their bodies.

There were no other sounds in the building. He continued walking down the hall, then paused. The door to Wesley Pruiss's room was open.

He reached behind him and took one of the red-handled knives from his leather belt. He held it at his side, then stepped forward, and took two steps into the room.

Wesley Pruiss was propped up on pillows, looking toward the door. His eyes were confused, frightened. The Wa smiled. He extended the knife before him.