Warren Murphy: Air Raid

"Do you have a description of the assassin?" The Master of Sinanju was sitting on the floor near Remo, a blank sheet of parchment spread out before him. He clucked his tongue disapprovingly.

"He was not an assassin, Emperor Smith," Chiun called in annoyance. "An assassin is an individual skilled in the art of precision location and removal services, not some boom-flinging Hun. And most important, an assassin is only an assassin who succeeds in eliminating his target." Shaking his head, he dropped his voice. "I can tell him until I am blue in the face, but no matter how long we work for the lunatic he will never get it right."

He returned to his blank parchment.

"Did Chiun say that this man was German?" Smith asked.

"Yeah," Remo said. "He stunk German, anyway. Fat and fortyish. Got away on a boat."

"Nothing more to go on?" Smith asked.

"Sorry," Remo said. "We were pretty far away, not to mention doing the vertical plummet at the time."

"I will check the marinas on Lake Geneva," Smith said. "Perhaps the employee records of the CCS will prove helpful. In any event, your tickets will be waiting at Cointrin when you arrive. Stay in touch." Smith broke the connection.

With a sigh, Remo hung up the phone. "We just got saddled indefinitely with the nutty heiress," he said.

Chiun didn't look up. "Consider yourself fortunate if that is your greatest worry this week, Remo Williams," the old man intoned. He seemed to be trying to burn words into the parchment with the act of thought alone.

It was the same parchment the tiny Asian had been staring at for the past week. Sitting on the floor of Amanda's apartment, he was still struggling with how exactly to enter his confession about Remo's whiteness into the Sinanju Scrolls without making it sound like a confession.

Even though Remo knew that he was the one being blamed for something that he obviously had no control over, this particular distraction of Chiun's was better than those maddeningly secretive letters the old man had been writing. At least here Remo knew what he was in for.

"I don't know why you think it's such a crime for a Master to train a white pupil," Remo grumbled. "You know as well as me that I'm not the only one to learn Sinanju."

Chiun knew to whom Remo was referring. One of the greatest foes they had ever faced was a white trained in Sinanju. Jeremiah Purcell was now in a perpetually medicated state in the security wing of Folcroft, a threat to no one.

"It is not the same," Chiun said. "He was the disciple of my wicked nephew. I am responsible for you, not him."

As Chiun continued to not write, Remo cast a depressed eye around Amanda Lifton's apartment. "Maybe the nice thing I'm supposed to do is set fire to this place," he said suddenly. "Probably not. I guess her neighbors could choke from inhaling all this saccharin."

He knocked most of the stuffed toys off the couch as he spread his grimy arms across the back.

"Are you gonna be through in there sometime this week?" he yelled into the bathroom.

"Almost finished!" Amanda called out over the spray of the shower. "Be careful of my petsywetsies!"

"You betsy-wetsie," Remo called back as he used a stuffed kitty to wipe the oily soot off his shoes. When he was done, he threw cat and shoes into the rubbish and pulled a brand-new pair of eight-hundred-dollar loafers from a plastic bag.

Chapter 13

The big, sprawling plantation was a throwback to the long gone days of bright and shining British colonialism.

The clapboard house and its wraparound porch were painted a clean and tidy white. Although the African sun burned down hot all year, the boards never warped, were not allowed to get too dry.

Mosquito screens enclosed the neat little gazebo that sat to one side of the front yard. When the days stretched long into twilight and night drew in like a lazy fog, the orange glow from a lone pipe bowl could often be seen through those screens. Swinging lazily with the back-and-forth motion of the old porch swing.

The sun had set on the British Empire, but some small vestige of it lived on in that big old house. Odd that the neighboring farmers would think that, since the sole occupant of the house was not English, but American. But he had that cool confidence, the superior mannerly attitude of the velvet-gloved conquerors their ancestors had come to know, then fear and, finally, to hate.

A few years before, attackers had targeted the whites who lived in Zimbabwe. Gentleman farmers who had inherited the land they lived on from their fathers, who in turn had inherited it from their fathers before them, were being slaughtered in their homes. No one lifted a hand to stop the bloodshed. In fact, it was encouraged. But even when the president had given his approval to the murder of whites and the seizing of their land, the gangs of killers who roamed the wilderness cut a wide swath around that clean little house with the neatly trimmed rosebushes and the American owner who liked to sit out in the gazebo on warm summer nights to smoke his pipe and watch the stars.

They left the man and his house alone for one simple reason. Fear. The occupant of the house had a reputation in this part of Africa. Yes, he was quiet and genteel. And, when properly provoked, he was more deadly than any workaday mob that might assault his little bit of paradise.

Fear kept them away and kept the little farmhouse safe.

As he spread manure and mulch around his rosebushes, Benson Dilkes didn't look like a figure to provoke fear. He was flicking an aphid off a leaf and tsking in annoyance when he heard the telephone ring in the house.

Brushing the dirt from his hands, he climbed to his feet.

Dilkes was a handsome man, with a tan, rugged face and laugh lines that crimped the corners of his eyes. Although his dark hair was peppered gray and the calendar of his life had recently slipped past his sixtieth year, he still retained the vigor of youth.

He mounted the porch, grabbing a sweating glass from a metal table before going inside.

The phone was old and clunky. A good solid number from the days when a phone could be used to club a man to death or strangle him with the cord. With the new phones these days, the best a person could do was call a target a thousand times and hope he got head cancer.

Thankful once more for uncomplicated retirement, Dilkes scooped up the phone. "Hello." He took a sip of his drink.

"I think I might have a problem, Benson."

The voice surprised Dilkes. The man on the other end of the line rarely spoke and never, ever called. "Is that you, Olivier?" Dilkes asked slowly. The answer caused him to put his drink down. Carefully.

"Yes." Even that one word was difficult to get out. "Benson, I just left an event. There were two targets of interest that were not acquired as I had hoped."

"You failed?" Dilkes asked. At this point he doubted he could mask his surprise even if he tried. He sat on the edge of a chair, concern etched in his deep tan lines.

"These men are special, Benson. Different than what I am used to. I was hoping you could offer some insight. Perhaps you know something about them."

Could it be? Was that actual fear in that accented voice? The younger man had always had ice for blood.

"I'll help if I can, Olivier," Dilkes said. "What information do you have on them?"

"Very little, I am afraid. One is an elderly Asian. Perhaps Korean or Japanese. I was too far to see clearly. The other was just an ordinary Caucasian."

Benson Dilkes felt the floor go out from underneath his feet. For an awful moment, the room swirled. "My God, it's them," Dilkes croaked.

The voice on the phone grew excited. "You know them? Who are they?"

Dilkes picked up his drink, draining it in one gulp. "I know of them. Run, Olivier," he insisted. "Get far away from those two. My God-you're lucky to be alive. Run as far as you can and don't look back."