Warren Murphy: The Empire Dreams

"I said who the hell are you?" he snapped. Remo's hard face was a block of frozen obsidian. He straightened up, fixing Pagget with a look of pure malice.

"Death," he replied, voice soft.

And suddenly, Linus Pagget felt his entire world collapse into the boundless fury of the intruder's dark, accusing eyes.

Before the criminal could cry out for help, a thick-wristed hand shot forward. In a breathless whisper, night fell on Linus Pagget.

HE HAD NO WAY OF KNOWING how long he had been out.

When Linus awoke, he felt something hard against the back of his head. For a minute, he thought he had dreamt the whole thing and that he was leaning against his cell wall. But when he opened his eyes, he found that he was no longer in his cell.

A chill night wind blew across his prone form. All around, crickets chirped.

Linus struggled to a sitting position.

Remo was a few feet away from him, perched atop a chunk of carved granite. He was staring off into the unseeable depths of the night. Somewhere far distant, an owl hooted.

There were other objects, like the one Remo sat on, lined up beyond him. Their shape was familiar to Linus.

Twisting sharply, Linus saw that he had been propped up against yet another of the familiar objects.

Headstones. The stranger from his cell had brought him to a cemetery.

Linus gulped. "What do you want from me?" he asked, hoarse voice tremulous.

Remo's answer was a puzzling non sequitur.

"I was sentenced to die once," Remo said. His gaze remained far off. As if by staring alone, he could peel back the years to view his younger self. "Just like you."

"Hey, I haven't even been tried yet," Linus insisted.

The evil smile that cracked the wistful veneer of Remo's face sent an icy frisson up the young man's spine. As quickly as the smile appeared, it scurried off, leaving in its wake the death's skull mask that was Remo's usual expression. Night shadows painted eerie streaks across the sunken patches of his face.

"I was framed for murder. They strapped me into an electric chair. Believe me, Linus, you don't know fear until you have that done to you."

Linus wanted to dispute that, but remained mute. He began listening for the sound of police sirens. Hoping their piercing cry would rise up from the deathly still night.

"I thought the world had ended when they pulled the switch. But it didn't. When I woke up, they'd given me a new face and a new life. I was supposed to rid the world of scum like you."

At this, Linus felt his head begin to swim. He pushed himself carefully to his feet. Eyes darted to his left. In the far-off distance, the wrought-iron cemetery gate jutted from the crooked earth. Linus inched toward it.

Remo continued to speak, seemingly unmindful of what was going on three yards to his left.

"You ever hear of CURE, Linus?" Remo asked.

The killer was shocked to be addressed. He sniffled at the cold. "No," he said. He had begun to shake in fear.

"I'm not surprised. Only a handful of people have. They were the group that was supposed to clean up America. Work outside the Constitution in order to preserve it. They drafted me. And I've been a loyal foot soldier for them, more or less, for a long time now. But I've failed, Linus. You want to know how I know I've failed?"

When he turned his attention on Pagget, the scrawny young man froze like a deer caught in headlights. He had been attempting to tiptoe away through the damp night grass.

Linus wheeled, leaning casually against the nearest moss-covered headstone.

"No," he announced. "Uh, no. Why?"

"Because in America now, a piece of slime can break into a convent wielding a gun, Linus. He can steal the prescription drugs from convalescing nuns and hold a one-man party for twelve hours straight while police negotiators try to talk him out. He can rape a nun, Linus. He can get a butcher knife from the convent kitchen and hold it to her throat and force himself on her. Then he can carve up her body like a Halloween pumpkin. In the America I was supposed to be preserving, that sort of thing wouldn't happen."

By this time, Linus could not stop his shaking legs. His ears strained for police sirens.

Where were they? Didn't they miss him by now? They had to be looking for him.

"And no one cares." Remo's voice was somewhere else. Lost in the hazy images of days long past. "You know what, Linus? I wish I didn't care. But I do. And even though I've tried, I don't know what to do to stop caring."

Still sitting atop his stone perch, Remo's head drooped, as if pressed down by both great sadness and awesome responsibility.

That single moment of intense introspection by his captor was the break Linus Pagget had been waiting for.

He turned and ran. Ran for all he was worth. His lungs burned. His raw throat bled.

He ran, and ran, and ran.

The cemetery gate rose up before him. He grabbed the cold iron with shaking hands. As he shoved it open, slipping on the wet grass, a face appeared on the other side.

Linus screamed.

"I can only do what I know is right, Linus," Remo said as he reached through the gates and grabbed the whimpering man by the throat. "But between you and me, I don't think it makes a difference anymore."

"You don't have to do anything!" Linus pleaded. Remo said not a word. Although it would bring him no satisfaction, the decision had already been made.

Two hands reached out for the sides of Linus's head.

The pain was incredible. Brilliant. Blinding. It was a more excruciatingly intense crystallization of sheer agony than Linus Pagget could ever have imagined in his twenty-seven long, but useless years of life. And then it was over.

The official report would eventually say that Linus Pagget had been spirited from the Nashua Police Station by forces unknown. Whoever had liberated him from his cell possessed equipment that was somehow able to exert hydraulic force of incredible proportions. The bones of his skull had literally been fused into a single, tight mass no larger than a baseball. Somewhere in that tight ball of pulverized calcium phosphate, the evil brain of the late Linus Pagget had been compressed into a gray knot the size of a Ping-Pong ball.

But even though a machine of incredible force had to have been used to do such a deed, there were no signs of such a killing device, nor of the tracks it would have left near the spot where Linus's body had been found.

There were many who believed his death was an act of God. But those who had suffered most at his hands, the nuns of St. Jude, did not speculate on the thing that might have brought the man who had terrorized them to his violent end. They merely prayed for Linus Pagget's eternal soul.

AFTER HE WAS DONE, Remo let the lifeless body drop to the cold earth.

He felt nothing about what he had just done. In fact, he felt nothing at all. About anything. And the emptiness within him was almost unbearable.

As he looked down at the body, he shook his head sadly.

"And another hundred will flood in to take your place," he said, hollow of voice.

Remo turned from the twisted remains of Linus Pagget. He left the cemetery, intense desolation slowly flooding the gutted pit that was his very being.

Chapter 3

The Banque de Richelieu was tucked away between a pair of old brick buildings on a small street between the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Avenue du Maine.

The bank was just shy of one hundred years old, and most of its architecture and its interior reflected its long history. Beyond the foyer of gleaming marble and polished wood, however, invisible to the eye of the average customer, the old bank had been forced to make some concessions to the modern era.