Warren Murphy: Wolf's Bane

Remo looked dubious.

"Speak now!" Chiun said. He disliked having the history of Sinanju doubted, especially by Master Remo the Illiterate.

"But you said Koreans don't-"

"The hermit was Chinese," Chiun replied. "If you applied yourself to study of geography, you would have known that Kanggye stands beside the Yalu River, but a few miles from the Chinese border. "

"Ah. Of course, it all makes sense now."

"You are skeptical," said Chiun.

"Sounds like a fairy tale," Remo replied.

Chiun made a little sniffing sound, as of dismissal. "I despair of bringing the great history of our village to the blighted desert of your mind."

"Hey, I've got a hell of a lot of Sinanju history stored up here," Remo protested.

"Prove it. I will quiz you."

"Love to but I gotta run," Remo said with a glance at his watch and getting quickly to his feet. "I'm on the next flight out to Omaha, at six-fifteen," said Remo.

"I'll come, as well," Chiun said, rising.

"I thought you had a lot of meditating to do."

"I will meditate in the hotel room while you go about serving your Emperor and performing your duties as the Reigning Master of Sinanju. And on the aircraft you can take my quiz."

"That," Remo said, "would be wonderful." Remo was lying. It would, in reality, suck.

"I knew you would think so," Chiun sang out brightly. Chiun was lying, as well. He knew Remo would hate it. That was part of what made it fun.

Chapter 4

The flight to Omaha was perfectly routine. Routine required that Chiun, the Master of Sinanju Emeritus and veteran of more airplane flights than the entire flight crew, spend the majority of the time staring out at the wing. Watching for the signs that it was about to snap off. He lost interest in quizzing Remo somewhere over Kentucky.

The flight was over its quota on annoying and obnoxious travelers, including a big-mouthed businessman crammed in next to Remo. A bleached-blond single mother and her two unruly children swarmed into the row in front of them. A red-haired boy with catastrophic freckles stood on his seat and spotted Chiun, calling out to his mother, "Lookee at the Chinaman!"

Remo could feel Chiun steaming in the seat immediately to his left. The mother shushed her brat, and Remo was relaxing when the stranger to his right said, "So, your friend's Chinese?"

"Korean."

"Too bad. I was in China for a couple months last year. Wide-open marketplace for auto dealerships, you know. Fantastic. I don't know about Koreans, but the Chinese people are the nicest folks you'd ever want to meet. Of course-"

"You've got a piece of lint there," Remo said and reached out toward the salesman's lapel.

The slightest touch was all it took. The businessman who liked Chinese people went to sleep. He'd regain consciousness about the time they landed in Omaha.

"Sweet dreams," said Remo, making his face into an evil sort of grin.

The red-haired child saw it all and watched wideeyed.

"I think he'll stay quiet now," Remo said with a manic grin. "Will you?"

The boy nodded, mouth agape, and sat in his seat. He didn't make another sound.

Chiun's face was blank but his breath came out, "Heh heh heh."

"You're welcome," Remo said. "Heh heh heh."

AT OMAHA'S EPPLEY AIRFIELD they picked up a midsize Chevrolet sedan in the Avis lot. Remo puzzled over the Auto Club street map and drove them north and west of Omaha on Interstate 680, catching Highway 6 eastbound, for a run past malls and hospitals to Eastland Park.

Jean Cuvier-alias "Rick Baker"-lived alone in a smallish house near the Elmwood Park country club. Small didn't mean cheap in that neighborhood, and Remo wondered briefly if the informer would miss it.

Not that it mattered. He was leaving, one way or another. The witness had run out of options. He could leave or he could die.

Remo found the house after only a couple of wrong turns and parked half a block away, to the west. He had already worked out the move with Chiun, who had decided at the last minute to come along.

Remo waited for a moment near the car, while Chiun vanished into the backyard of a house two doors from Baker's. He gave the Master of Sinanju a few seconds, then ambled down the block and up to Baker's door.

Inside the house the doorbell played a little tune that Remo couldn't quite recognize. He rang it again. The door opened and he was still trying to figure out the song so he rang it a third time.

"Oh," he told the man at the door. "The Rocky theme. Oh, brother."

Remo had been expecting some sort of a tough guy to answer. What he got was an animated version of the Pillsbury doughboy.

"I don't want nothin'," the man said. "I guess that makes you one of a kind."

"Says what?"

"Everybody wants something," Remo answered.

"Not me. Now go away."

"Staying alive. I bet you want that, don't you?"

The eyes narrowed. "Does I know you?"

"I know you, Mr. Cuvier."

It took a second for the name to register, then the doughboy recoiled-and backed into Chiun, who'd come in through the rear without making a sound. The witness yelped and Remo caught his arms before he started sending windmill punches at the old Korean.

"See, now that will get you killed," Remo chided Cuvier. "I've already saved your life, and we've only known each other fifteen seconds."

Remo carried him into the living room and propped him upright on the sofa. Cuvier started swinging again as soon as Remo freed his hands, so he grabbed them again. Cuvier found his hands locked in twin steel vises. The guy wasn't even putting an effort into holding him prisoner.

"All right," Cuvier said at last, slumping. "Go on and do what you come for."

"That would be the saving-your-life thing I was talking about," Remo told him.

"You all want to explain that?"

"Three of your former associates have been killed recently." Remo gave him the names, watching the color drain from Cuvier's face as he spoke. "Someone traced their new identities and ran them down. It wasn't pretty. You're the last in line."

"How were the killings done?" Cuvier demanded.

"The medical examiner suspects a pack of animals."

"Loup-garou!" Cuvier nearly bolted from the couch, despite Remo's restraining grip.

"What's that again?" he asked.

"Never you mind."

Remo looked at Chiun, who looked bored. "Loup-garou is werewolf," he explained.

"I'm getting out of here right now," Cuvier declared.

"That's exactly what we had in mind," Remo said.

Chapter 5

The rabbit had been dead for half an hour, maybe forty minutes. It was crossing Highway 85, between Papillion and La Vista, when it met a Dodge Intrepid doing half-past sixty in the northbound lane and was dispatched to bunny heaven on the spot.

It was a clean kill, relatively speaking: fractured vertebrae and shattered skull, with visible extrusion of the brain, but no great damage to the carcass overall. In fact, the rabbit's body still retained a hint of warmth that pleased the leader of the pack, his nostrils flaring.

He was a carnivore by breeding and by inclination, craving meat and mostly passing on the veggies when his stomach growled for food. As it was growling now.

The little problem that isolated him from humanity also prevented him from strolling through a supermarket, loading up his basket with a pile of steaks, chops, ribs and such-but still, he had to eat. Back home, in the bayou country, he would go out prowling with the pack, or sometimes on his own, and not stop looking until he had satisfied his hunger. On the road, it was a different story. He could pack meat with him, ice it down, but it would only last so long and stretch so far. When he ran out, or the supply on hand went bad, the leader of the pack improvised.

Roadkill, for instance.