Warren Murphy: Deadly Genes

"The eye sees only what it expects to see," Remo said.

"But the cameras do the rest," Todd Grautski cautioned. "They're everywhere."

"Don't worry," Remo assured him. "They missed us."

"What about the satellites?" the Collablaster begged.

As he spoke, he felt the sudden impact of a hard surface beneath him. The knots in the blanket were unraveled. Grautski and Ferngard spilled out onto the cold cafeteria floor.

"Think galactically, act terrestrially," Remo told the Collablaster.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Grautski asked. He rubbed his bruised backside.

Free now, Ferngard blinked hard. A small piece of fuzz from the blanket had gotten stuck in his eye. "It mean you crazy for always worryin' 'bout satellites and microwaves an' shit like that."

All around was the airy mess hall. The big windows high above on one wall were covered with steel mesh. Occasionally, a searchlight would rake across the translucent glass.

"Bring your security blanket," Remo whispered as he walked to the window wall.

Grautski hesitated. Ferngard didn't. Scooping up the blanket, he ran after Remo. Grautski followed reluctantly.

"Who are you, man?" Ferngard asked hoarsely.

"Just a friend of humanity," Remo answered softly. The underlying tone of menace was lost on both prisoners.

"You really mean what you say to hair-dryerpuss?" Ferngard asked. "You was in prison?"

As he spoke, he glanced up at the windows. They were far away. Layers of imposing mesh coated them. The glass interior was crisscrossed with even more threads of steel.

"A long time ago." Remo nodded grimly.

"You don't look like the jail type," the inmate said. "You seem pretty damn straitlaced."

"I was framed," Remo said. "The guy who's my boss now set me up. I was sentenced to die in the electric chair. It didn't work. But as a dead man-at least officially-I was able to go places and do things that a living person would have a hard time doing."

They were at the wall.

"You really got the chair?" Ferngard asked, amazed.

"I don't like the electric chair," Todd Grautski said, wandering up behind them.

"You don't like de 'lectric toaster," Ferngard snapped, peeved.

The Collablaster glanced from one man to the other. "The same technology produced them both," he argued weakly.

They ignored him.

"Sat, strapped, bagged and burned," Remo told Ferngard. He pressed his hands to the wall. It was cool to the touch.

"Wow. How many people you kill?" Ferngard asked.

Remo looked at him. His eyes were invisible beyond the deep shadows of his eye sockets. "Today?" he asked.

"No, back then. When your boss set you up."

"One. But I didn't kill him."

"You got the chair for doing one guy?" Femgard sputtered derisively. He tried to contain his laughter.

"It was a different era," Remo said. "People were punished for doing wrong. Not like now when any bored psycho with an automatic rifle can shoot up a whole railroad car full of commuters and end up in a cell crammed full of digital clocks and nudie magazines."

"Oh." Ferngard missed the sarcasm completely. "So what's the stuff you can do now that you couldn't do before?"

"This, for one," Remo said.

Remo reached out and grabbed Kershaw Ferngard by the collar of his white T-shirt. He flipped Todd Grautski up onto the same shoulder. Remo pressed his free hand against the wall of the cafeteria. Neither prisoner was quite sure what to expect. Even prepared thusly for the unexpected, both were still surprised when Remo's feet left the floor. Ferngard's eyes grew wide. The one abraded by the tiny wool fragment was a watery red.

The cafeteria began to grow smaller. Row upon row of empty tables stretched out into the thick shadows at the far side of the large room.

He looked to the wall for some alternate explanation for this bizarre act of levitation. He saw only Remo.

Graceful in the precise way that spiders were not, Remo was using one hand and the toes of his leather loafers to carry them all up the smoothly painted cinder-block walls of the mess hall. There was not a hint of strain on his face.

"How you doing that?" Ferngard asked, astonished.

"You ask a lot of questions," Remo commented. The words came easily. It seemed that he should have at least grunted.

"If you could do this stuff, why'd you let your boss put you in the chair?" Ferngard pressed. He wiggled his toes. They moved through empty air.

"I couldn't do anything remotely like this back then," Remo explained. "Once I was officially dead, they turned me over to the Master of Sinanju."

"Sinanju?" Ferngard asked. "That like kung fu?"

"Think kung fu times about a billion," Remo said, "and you'll be scratching the surface. The Master of Sinanju trained me to be his heir. There's only one Sinanju Master and pupil per century, roughly. After bitching at me like a supermodel on a location shoot for about ten years, he made sure I was up to snuff for my mission in life."

"What's that?" Ferngard asked.

They were at one of the large windows. Ferngard was sure they'd have to go back down and find another way out once Remo realized that there was no breaking through. But to the inmate's surprise, Remo began working on the pane as he spoke.

"I'm an assassin," Remo said. "I work for an organization called CURE. It doesn't exist officially, and only me, my boss, my trainer and the President of the United States know it's around."

"A government conspiracy," the Collablaster breathed.

"The granddaddy of them all," Remo agreed. Remo pressed Ferngard to the wall. Somehow the suction that brought them this far seemed to work straight through the Long Island Railroad Shooter's body. Remo used his free hand to pop the bolts around the securing cage at the corner of the window. He slipped each small bit of metal into the pocket of his chinos while he worked. Somehow he did this without dropping Ferngard or toppling Grautski off his shoulder.

"Yeah," Remo said, warming to his story. "CURE was set up years ago to work outside the Constitution in order to protect it. We take care of the cases that can't be handled in a strictly legal fashion."

He grabbed the mesh and peeled it back. There was a distant, soft creak of metal as the tiny links tore from concrete. The peeled-back section of mesh exposed a wide triangle at the corner of the window.

Remo went to work on the pane. He used the sharp edge of one index fingernail, which was slightly longer than the rest of his nails. The nail scored both glass and the interwoven fibers of metal sandwiched inside the thick pane.

With a soft pop, the large pane came free. "Hang on for a minute," Remo said to Ferngard. He hefted the prisoner higher, hooking the back of his shirt onto a twisted bit of metal. With both hands now free and only the weight of Grautski on his shoulder, Remo slid sideways across the windowsill, bringing the large section of glass with him. He settled the triangular pane inside the triangular section of wire mesh. It was a perfect fit. He coiled the bottom metal links to hold the glass in place. Once the glass was safe, he moved back over to Kershaw.

Slipping the inmate down from the makeshift hook, Remo carried both men out through the window.

There was a narrow ledge rimming the upper portion of the cafeteria building. It wasn't nearly wide enough for someone to stand on. Yet Remo walked along the ledge as if it were the Coney Island Boardwalk.

"What really burns me is that if I did know how to do this stuff years ago, I could have escaped," Remo continued. "But the paradox is, if I'd escaped I never would have learned how to do this stuff." The brisk night wind blew through Remo's short dark hair. "You know what I mean?"

Neither man really heard Remo. They were too busy looking down at the empty prison courtyard three stories below. Todd Grautski muttered unintelligibly. Kershaw Ferngard clutched the prison blanket tightly to his chest.