Warren Murphy: The End of the Beginning

Conn was interested, sure. But there was damned little he could do with what he'd learned.

He had filed the information away in a dusty corner of his brain. And there it sat for almost two decades. Until one day that amazing, useless scrap of knowledge resurfaced. And with it, the hope of maybe, just maybe, saving a nation.

THE ROWING GREW choppier as they neared the sub. The three steamer trunks were tied to the big rubber boat with a rope line. They bobbed obediently in the raft's wake as they closed in on the waiting submarine.

If the trunks started to sink, they'd pull the back end of the raft underwater. Conn wasn't thrilled with the idea of taking a dip in freezing water. Worse was the possibility that he'd have to rescue his passenger from the drink.

MacCleary still couldn't believe the shape of the old man. The stories he'd read back in the fifties had led him to believe that the Master of Sinanju would be, well, younger. This guy looked older than dirt.

The Korean's parchment face seemed troubled to depths beyond Conn's understanding as he stared out across the bay.

"You mind if I ask you something?" MacCleary asked abruptly as he struggled with the oar.

"I do not paddle," the old Korean replied blandly. Saltwater mist speckled his white hair.

"No," Conn said. "When I came to your village before. Back, geez, seventeen, eighteen years ago. When I delivered the gold from General MacArthur. They said you weren't here because you were off training your pupil."

The Master of Sinanju didn't look at MacCleary. His narrowed eyes were locked beyond the big man, on the looming shape of the American submarine.

"What of it?" Chiun asked, his voice thin.

"Well," MacCleary began, "no offense, but... well, shouldn't your pupil be of age by now? I mean, I know some of your history here. In a generation only one Master trains a pupil. Yours should be Master by now, shouldn't he?"

Conn couldn't explain it. But later, when he recalled that moment, he would swear the freezing air of the West Korean Bay dropped by twenty degrees.

Chiun turned his head with agonizing slowness. When his eyes locked on those of MacCleary, the American was convinced that he was gazing into the face of death itself.

Chiun's voice seemed to quell the very waves. "Yes," the old man said. "He should be."

And he said no more.

They were at the sub. Conn had never been so grateful to see American sailors in his life. The young men reached down with helping hands from the ladder of the Darter.

The old Korean was right about one thing. His trunks turned out to be seaworthy. They weren't heavier or seeping water as they were hauled up the side of the sub.

Chiun scurried up beside them. The old man's movements were so quick and graceful he looked like some form of seafaring spider. In a trice he was across the deck and up the conning tower. He disappeared through the hatch.

Sitting in the wave-tossed raft, Conrad MacCleary shook his head. "It's worth every penny to get you on our side," he grumbled, dropping the oar at his feet.

The sailors helped the big man from the rubber raft.

Chapter 3

Phil Rand had no idea why this particular job was so special. But it had to be special to at least someone at AT e the extra attention?

Try as he might, Phil couldn't see this as anything other than the usual mundane scut work. Just another day at the office. For Phil, the office this day was a gloomy waterside street in New Rochelle, New York.

His crew had arrived at a little after five in the morning. When the telephone company trucks rolled to a stop on Shore Road, a supervisor was already waiting for them.

The predawn gloom seemed tailor-made for the mysterious company rep. The guy looked as though he lived in shadows. He stood there like an eager vampire as Phil and the others climbed out of their trucks.

"You're late," the supervisor said. His tone was chilly in the damp October air.

Phil checked his watch. It was only six minutes after five. "We got caught in traffic," he said, half-joking.

Of course the supervisor was kidding. After all, the guy couldn't be serious. However, the look of displeasure never left his angular face.

"That is unlikely, given the hour," the supervisor said. "And I am on a tight schedule. I would appreciate it if you got to work as quickly as possible."

Phil sighed deeply. Another day, another hassle. "Whatever you say," he muttered.

With maps and measuring Phil quickly found the spot he was after. At his direction, his men set to work tearing up a chunk of Shore Road.

It took more digging than Phil expected. They found the cable buried deep. The braided steel line ran in from Long Island Sound, past Glen Island. It stopped dead at Phil's feet. Coiled in the hole like an insulated copper snake was another line that ran through an abandoned sewer line from a point inland. Phil had spent the previous day snaking the second line in from two streets over. The new line ended near the capped one.

"That it?" Phil asked.

The shadowed man stepped to the edge of the hole. Looking in, he nodded sharply.

That was all. Couldn't even be bothered to grunt a yes.

"Yeah, that's the one," Phil instructed his men. The fact that this was an underwater cable didn't matter to Phil. To Phil and the rest of the men it was just another tedious day on the job. Made all the more annoying by the presence of the humorless, silent supervisor.

Phil didn't know who the man was or why he had showed up for this specific job. He was just some faceless higher-up in the corporate monolith that was American Telephone and Telegraph. One thing was sure. The man's eager, virtually unblinking gaze gave Phil a case of the heebie-jeebies.

Men climbed down into the hole.

"This from Columbia Island?" Phil asked the silent supervisor as his men worked to connect the cable.

"I really cannot say," the supervisor replied. His voice was tart and nasal.

Although day had long broken, the gaunt man still kept to the shadows. Only when the sun had risen fully did Phil realize it was the other way around. The supervisor didn't keep to the shadows; the shadows clung to him.

The man was gray faced and dour. He looked more like an undertaker than a telephone company employee.

It took five full hours to complete the work. The bright red rubber tubing that protected the strands of the copper analogue line were spliced carefully together.

Phil thought that was weird. The individual lines weren't color-coded. But the supervisor assured him that they could start anywhere.

They were done everything and were burying the line by 10:30 a.m. The supervisor waited until the line was covered by six feet of dirt and sand before turning to go.

The New Rochelle Department of Public Works truck had just arrived. In back was a steaming pile of blacktop.

"Excuse me, sir," Phil Rand asked as the DPW truck backed up to the hole.

The supervisor was climbing into his station wagon. Phil noted that it was the same model as his wife's. The '69 they had bought new two years ago. The supervisor hesitated. For the first time, Phil noted his name tag. It identified the man as Harold Jones.

"Yes?" Supervisor Jones asked impatiently.

"What's this all about, sir?" Phil asked.

The supervisor didn't miss a beat. "Telephone company business," he said crisply.

As the city dump truck poured tar onto the road, the supervisor drove away. He left Phil Rand and his crew standing, oblivious, at ground zero of one of the most damning secrets in the history of the American republic.

THAT THE PHONE LINE was merely one of the most damning secrets in U.S. history was an unquestionable fact to the man who had spent the morning posing as an AT or. At this point in his life, he had been privy to enough secrets to know how to categorize them as either big or small.