Warren Murphy: Unnatural Selection

The lemony voice on the other end of the line was not that of Mark Howard. Where Howard's voice was young, this voice was older, more tired and infinitely more irritated.

"What is the problem?" announced Dr. Harold W. Smith, the director of CURE.

"No problem," Remo said. "Except that I don't take orders from your helper monkey. Why are you whispering?"

"I am in my bedroom on my briefcase phone. My wife is downstairs and I don't want her to overhear. What's wrong? Mark says you are having trouble with the assignment."

"No trouble. I don't even know what it is. You know the rule, Smitty. I'm Sinanju. Sinanju gets hired by an emperor. You're my emperor. I work for you."

He could almost see Smith wincing on the other end of the line. "Please don't you start calling me that, too."

Remo was the Reigning Master of Sinanju, the original martial art. Born in blood on the rocky shores of North Korea, Sinanju was the sun source of all the other, lesser martial arts. For millennia the Masters of Sinanju had rented their services as assassins to rulers throughout the world. Remo's teacher, who had been Reigning Master until Remo's ascension to that position a few months before, had refused to admit to working for anything less than a true tyrant king, and so had long before dubbed Harold W. Smith "emperor." It was an honorific Smith didn't embrace. And it was definitely something he didn't wish to see carried through into Remo's fledgling Masterhood.

"Whatever you call it, you're the boss," Remo said. "Tradition says I can't start taking orders from the kid. And I happen to agree with tradition here. What if Smitty Junior goes nuts and starts giving me whacko assignments, like maybe I should make him President or pope or something? Or he tells me to start assassinating petunias 'cause they give him the sniffles? Or what if he orders me to kill you?"

"At the moment I would consider that a blessing," Smith said tightly.

"You're not out of it that easy, Smitty," Remo grumbled. "If I'm stuck with Howard, you are, too."

"Yes," Smith said dryly. "Just so you know, Remo, I do not consider myself stuck at all. Mark has helped lighten my load considerably. Two nights a week now I am able to have dinner with my wife. And might I remind you, Mark has also saved both our lives."

Remo's face darkened at the memory. There had been a terrible battle back in the village of Sinanju. On that dark day months before, it was Mark Howard's timely intervention that had provided insight that might have turned the tide.

"Maybe," Remo admitted. "The jury's still out on what would have happened back then if he'd butted out." He frowned with a sudden thought. "What do you mean both? You weren't in the line of fire back then."

Smith cleared his throat. "Er, yes. Can we get on with this? My wife nearly has dinner ready."

"Fine. Sue me for wanting to hear your dulcet tones," Remo said. He drummed his fingertips on the steel phone-book tray. "What's the deal? More cockroaches, right?"

As Smith quickly sketched out the details of that night's assignment, Remo's fingers continued to drum a hollow staccato on the pay phone's metal tray.

After a few moments, Smith stopped suddenly. Bored, Remo was back to counting birds.

"What is that noise?" the CURE director asked abruptly.

"What noise?" Remo asked.

"I don't know. It sounds like a jackhammer." Remo glanced around. He didn't see any jackhammer. In fact, he saw no road construction whatsoever. He did see a few more college students. They were staring at him as they walked past. More accurately, they were staring at his hand.

Remo glanced down.

Four deep hollows in the shape of drumming fingers pitted the otherwise smooth surface of the stainless-steel phone-book tray. It looked as if the metal had superheated and melted into four neat pockets.

"It stopped," Smith said over the phone.

"Yeah," Remo grunted, stuffing his hand in his pocket. "Can we just finish this up?"

Smith seemed to sense something was wrong. "Were you even listening?"

"Sort of listening, mostly bored." He sighed. "Sorry, Smitty. I've got a lot of stuff on my mind lately."

It was true. He had been preparing nearly all of his adult life to take over as Reigning Master of Sinanju. He thought it would be a snap once he finally accepted the position. He had come to find out that there was no way to be completely ready for so awesome a responsibility. All the training in the world had not prepared him for the new reality of his life. Once he actually became Reigning Master, it just felt different than he had expected.

Remo was surprised by the CURE director's sympathetic tone.

"I understand," Smith said. "Even when one knows it is coming, it still takes time to come to grips psychologically with the burden of great responsibility. There has been some research into the subject. If it would be helpful, I could send some published papers on the topic."

"Pass. But feel free to quiz me on the state capitals. Better yet, ask me the boons granted to past Masters of Sinanju. For instance, did you know Master Cung managed to bamboozle three hundred armfuls of silk, a skepful of Sui dynasty myrrh, twenty golden flagons of rice wine, forty she goats and thirty pheasants from the Chinese? Chiun says they were peasants, but I think he's misreading the scrolls."

"Yes," Smith said thinly. "In any event, the target is across the Arkansas River and up Route 161 near Furlow. Did you get enough of the rest?"

"Enough. I've already got my squashing shoes on."

"Good, Please report back to Mark when you are finished. Sinanju rules do allow that, don't they?" There was a hint of thin sarcasm in his voice.

"Yes, that's kosher," Remo sighed.

"I don't understand why you've become so prickly lately in regard to Mark. I thought you had worked through your difficulties with him."

"I've got nothing against the kid, Smitty. I just liked it better when it was you, me and Chiun. Although right now Chiun isn't that much of a help."

"Is there something wrong with Master Chiun?"

"Nah. He's just being Chiun again. He came with me to Little Rock, but now he's sitting in a hotel room. He said he was contemplating his place in the cosmos or something. As if being the pain in my neck wasn't full-time job enough."

"Very well," Smith said. "Just remember, Remo. Nothing stays the same forever. Things change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not, but change is inevitable."

He was interrupted by a distant voice.

"Harold," Smith's wife called. "Dinner's ready."

"I have to go," the CURE director said. "Good luck. "

With a soft beep, the line went dead.

Remo held the cold phone loosely in his hand. He stared down at the permanent marks imprinted in the steel tray.

"Preaching to the choir, Smitty," he said softly. He hung up the pay phone.

THE TWIN-ENGINE CESSNA had flown up through the Gulf of Mexico. Staying low to avoid radar, the small aircraft hugged much of the shared border of Louisiana and Texas, finally breaking out across the Ouachita Mountains in southwestern Arkansas. It hummed into the Arkansas River Valley on the way to its evening rendezvous.

When it first appeared out of the cool, late spring night, it was as a sound rather than something visible to the eye.

The lone man waiting at Furlow's small airport heard the noise. Behind him, a red, white and blue banner slung from the side of a tin hangar advertised the Happy Apple Pie American Patriotic Flight School And Good-Time Hotdog Stand.

The man on the ground had come up with that name himself. The secret world in which he lived had become far more treacherous of late. Everything was about being inconspicuous now. Faysal al-Shahir was as proud of the very inconspicuous, very American-sounding name of his business as he was of his own false identity.