Warren Murphy: Syndication Rites

Remo wasn't in the mood to think about the future. In fact, when Upstairs called with this assignment, Remo was more than eager to accept it. He had hoped that activity-any activity at all-would keep him from thinking about anything other than the here and now.

The seat-belt light abruptly began flashing. Over the PA system, the pilot muttered something both in Spanish and in English. Alone with his thoughts, Remo listened to the words without hearing. His mind was somewhere else.

The eerie sensation was finally starting to go.

It all started a few months ago at the wake of an infant child in Illinois. Remo had gone there to find the baby's killer. Instead, he found himself troubled by repeated ghostly visitations from a young Korean boy. In time, Remo discovered that the child was in fact the son of his very own adoptive father. In a sense, this sad young boy was the spiritual brother the orphaned Remo Williams had never known.

Chiun's first pupil had died many years ago, and in so doing had helped to fulfill Remo's destiny. Under the strict tutelage of the Master of Sinanju, Remo had himself ascended to full Masterhood. In full command of his entire being, Remo was able to do things that could only be considered superhuman for the average man. Apparently, the ability to host visitations from the occasional Korean ghost was one of those things.

The boy had prophesied of Remo's coming years. Of the time that Remo would take a pupil of his own and when Chiun would retire to his native village of Sinanju in North Korea. He had also told of the unseen hardships Remo would yet face. As phantom apparitions went, this one had cribbed a lot from Dickens. His cryptic words of Remo's life-to-be made the youngest Master of Sinanju feel a lot like Ebenezer Scrooge. But, unlike Scrooge, by the sound of it there wasn't a damn thing Remo could do to change his life one way or another.

After that time a few short months before, it had taken Remo a while to stop looking over his shoulder every two seconds. Even now he caught himself glancing around every now and then, looking for...

Well, he didn't like to think about what it was he was looking for. He certainly wasn't looking for his future. That was a long way off. He hoped.

Anyway, this day wasn't about the future. This day, thank God, he had work to do. Something to distract him from the bleak words of his ghostly visitor.

When the plane touched down at Luis Munoz Marin International Airport, Remo was the first passenger down the air stairs. He found a cab in front of the main terminal.

His destination was in a seedier part of the capital, San Juan. He gave the driver the address from the scrap of paper he'd brought from the United States and settled back on the taxi's worn seat.

Twenty minutes later, the driver deposited Remo on a sidewalk in front of an old brick building that slouched along the edge of the road like a two-story vagrant. A faded rectangle above the door indicated where a sign had once hung. The sign, along with the business it had advertised, had long since fled the neighborhood.

The street was dark, but like most streets in San Juan it was crowded. A few weak lights pinched the heavy shadows.

"Thanks," Remo said to the anxious taxi driver. Without bothering to count, he peeled a number of twenties off a thick roll of bills.

"It is not safe here," the cabbie warned as he accepted the money. His accent was soft, his voice tense. "MIR owns this neighborhood. This is their stronghold."

At this, Remo offered a flat smile. It was a smile devoid of even a hint of warmth. "According to my guidebook, it's Menudo world headquarters. Tell you what." He peeled off another eight twenties. "I won't be long. Circle the block and meet me back here in ten minutes. If I don't come out with Ricky Martin's signature, this is yours." He held out the bills for an enticingly long moment before depositing them back in the pocket of his tan chinos.

The driver frowned as he eyed Remo's hard face. The fare looked to be in his early thirties. His white T-shirt was spotless, and his hand-sewn leather loafers held not a single scuff or scratch. Apart from the man's startlingly thick wrists, there wasn't anything outwardly extraordinary about him. Except for his eyes.

The driver found himself studying Remo's eyes. Set deep in his skull-like face, the passenger's brown eyes glinted with a quiet menace that stilled the cabbie's heart between beats. There was somehow the promise of otherworldly menace buried in the depths of those penetrating eyes.

The cabdriver nodded with slow fear. "Very well," he agreed. "I will return in ten minutes." When Remo turned to go, the cabbie called after him. "I am not for independence," the older man blurted.

On the darkened sidewalk, Remo turned silently. "I love America," the cabbie insisted. Realizing the building in front of which he was proclaiming his fealty for the United States, he pitched his voice lower. "I have never missed an opportunity to express my patriotism. In fact, in November I voted for the man who is to be the new President."

Remo considered the man's words for a long moment. At last, he gave a knowing nod.

"Too late to take it back now," commiserated Remo Williams, a man who yet possessed some vestiges of childlike patriotism, but who rarely found use for those who governed.

And turning on his heel, Remo headed for the building.

Behind the wheel of his cab, the driver didn't see the front door of the old building open. One moment, Remo was there; the next he was gone, swallowed by shadows.

The driver gulped. Although he did not agree with MIR or its tactics, the older man found himself saying a silent prayer for those inside that crumbling building.

Doors locked on the dangerous San Juan slum, he pulled out into the street.

EDUARDO SANCHEZ HAD SPENT nearly twenty years of his life as a political prisoner in a foreign land. That his incarceration had taken place not in Russia, China or even Cuba, but in the United States of America did not matter. Freedom was freedom and prison was prison. And he had spent a large part of his adulthood in a cold stone cell in a hellish New York maximum-security federal prison.

That he had been imprisoned for his politics, there was no doubt. Oh, there were those who would have said that he was a murderer. Sanchez wasn't one of them. The bombs he'd set had been the first salvos in the war for liberation.

That his victims had been largely innocent civilians mattered not. America was guilty of oppression. America was its people. Therefore, all Americans were guilty.

Back in the U.S. in the 1970s, Eduardo Sanchez's Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, or MIR for short, had set off dozens of bombs intended to liberate Puerto Rico from beneath the grinding heel of its American oppressors. The only things the bombs succeeded in liberating were a few American arms and legs from a handful of worthless American torsos.

Prison had kept MIR silent for years. Not anymore.

The time had came. Finally.

In a grimy old garage in the back of an old factory in the most squalid San Juan slum, Eduardo Sanchez and most of the upper echelon of the movimiento were in the process of planning the first in a series of events that would oust the rulers of their island nation once and for all and install a new leader of the People's Puerto Rico.

"My friends, the time is upon us," Eduardo Sanchez announced solemnly to those gathered around. There were sixteen of them in total, all dressed in the drab paramilitary chic of the 1970s. The same clothes most of them had worn during their trial years ago. "We exchanged inactivity for our freedom. The silence of the past year has been difficult for all of us to endure. Yet for our benefactor, we embraced the silence. For her, we have kept this temporary truce."