Warren Murphy: Prophet Of Doom

That left only one CURE operative for field work.

With great reluctance, Smith unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. In an old cigar box tucked deep in the back of the drawer behind a stack of dummy sanitarium files, Smith found his old Army-issue Colt automatic.

He collected his battered leather briefcase and tucked the automatic in a special side pouch that was impervious to airport X-ray machines. Always cautious, Smith slipped a plastic laminated card in his wallet identifying him as airline security and thus legally entitled to carry a firearm on a plane.

Smith reserved a seat on the next flight to Wyoming, then shut down the Folcroft computers.

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He made one stop before leaving the building.

When he entered the room, Smith noted the candles and incense bowl of the previous day were gone, presumably packed away somewhere in the mountain of steamer trunks awaiting transshipment to North Korea. The heavy draperies were open, and dirty sunlight filtered grudgingly through the white translucent windows set high up in the concrete walls.

Chiun sat on the floor in the middle of a diluted patch of sunlight. The old man's eyes remained closed as Smith shut the door behind him.

"Master Chiun?"

"It is customary to knock," he informed Smith.

"I am sorry," Smith replied. "I thought you should know that I am leaving for Wyoming within the hour."

"You do not need my permission," Chiun said, thin of voice.

Smith felt a minor chill. The old Korean was usually effusive in his compliments to the man he called Emperor Smith. But now he was cold and distant. Chiun was at his most dangerous in these moods.

Smith cleared his throat and changed the subject. "There has been no word from Remo?"

Chiun's eyes squeezed more tightly as a cloud of worry passed across his aged brow. "I have not seen my son since yesterday," he admitted. "However, I have been attempting to locate him."

Smith frowned. Chiun had not left this room since the previous evening.

"Locate Remo?" Smith blurted. "How?"

Chiun sighed deeply. And for the first time that day

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opened his eyes. His stare was as barren and frigid as an Arctic winter.

"Why is gold the color gold?"

"Is that a riddle?" Smith asked.

Chiun merely stared.

"Gold is simply...golden," Smith offered.

"You would understand what it is I do even less," said Chiun, as if this settled the issue once and for all. And with that, the wizened Asian closed his eyes and refused to speak further on the matter. The whereabouts of Remo were a problem for Sinanju and would be dealt with by Sinanju; that seemed to be the Master of Sinanju's unspoken thought.

Smith got the message and backed quietly from the room. He would have neither Remo's help nor the help of the Master of Sinanju on his trip to Thermopolis.

Long after Smith had gone, Chiun remained immobile in the basement room, hazel eyes shut like trapdoors.

His desperate quest for his lost pupil continued.

No human being was present when the shadow emerged from the sea of posttwilight darkness. Therefore no man saw the black shape slide effortlessly through the gates like a silent fog.

Like a knife the distinctive wail of a frightened lemur sliced through the cold, dead heart of the night. The sound set off a chain reaction of complaint.

Nearby gibbons and spider monkeys howled when the shadow drifted past.

Gorillas propelled themselves swiftly away on leathery knuckles, finding safety behind trees and inartifi

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straw-filled corners, as far distant as possible from the wisp of moving darkness.

Farther away a dozen lions roared in terror at the night as a small herd of elephants trumpeted and stomped in fear beyond their heavy walls.

The shadow moved through turnstiles and past rusting metal railings. The lock on an unmarked rear door shattered as it passed. Fragments from the door handle skittered off in a symphony of metallic clinks, landing in large part beneath a pair of vacant benches and under a boarded-up vendor's cart.

The shadow passed inside.

The building was warm, the corridor suffused in the dull white glow of a single recessed light. A sudden hand movement shattered the light casing, and the bulb exploded in a spray of delicate wedges. The glass tinkled softly to the floor in the wake of the passing shadow.

The corridor led into a large chamber that had baked in the daytime sun. It still held the faint trace odors of hundreds of sweating men, women and children.

The main pathway in the center of the chamber was lined on either side by metal railings, the height and design of which vaguely resembled horse rails in an old Western. Beyond the railings, high Plexiglas panes cordoned off large cubicles from one another and offered a view inside each of the giant glass cages.

Most of the creatures within the boxed-off sections of glass didn't move as the shadow passed them by. Some did slither in lazy S-shaped paths through patches of transplanted grass and shrubs. Still more were looped around the branches and trunks of

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artificial or transplanted trees, but the movements these made were barely perceptible to the naked eye.

The shadow passed the cages of the cobras, asps and rattlesnakes without slowing. It found what it wanted in the final blocked-off pen at the far end of the main visitor's room on the other side of a sheet of one-inch-thick Plexiglas.

A plaque set below the exterior window was etched with the legend P. Molurus. Below that, in smaller letters, was written Indian Python.

The thing that had been Remo Williams paused before the sheet of heavy reinforced Plexiglas.

Remo could see himself in the glossy reflective surface of the glass-walled python cage, but everything seemed strange and distant. It was as if he were a faraway spectator to his own actions. His face, crawling with shadows, was a hollow-eyed death's-head.

When the demon force had taken over his mind, Remo had been helpless. He saw the image of the malevolent combatant that had raged within him since his encounter at the Truth Church ranch strike out at the more docile form. He did not know if the blow had struck home, but at the point when the outstretched hand of the evil combatant would have landed, both creatures had fled from his vision.

The dimensionless black plain on which they had stood was with him still, but it was now vacant, devoid of any life.

The moment they had vanished, Remo Williams had died, as well.

He remembered the look of anguish on Chiun's face when the old man realized that he had lost him to the Pythia. He recalled vividly his flight from Folcroft. He

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remembered skulking through the streets of Rye like some mongrel dog.

A full day of restless wandering for the soul that now controlled Remo's body had passed. And he had watched it all from a surreal vantage point, back behind his own eyes.

Superimposed above all the images flashing before him was the vacant black battlefield. Remo had the intense feeling that there was something lurking over the alien horizon. Something more deadly than the spirit of the Pythia now controlling his actions.

The reptile house at the Bronx Zoo reappeared before him in a haze. His own face in the window of the python tank was washed-out and lifeless. A skull clinging to a thin mask of flesh.

A hand flew out before him. Remo recognized it as his own. It struck the side of the tank, and a vertical crack appeared beneath the tips of his slashing fingers. The thick Plexiglas split into two neat halves, and the thing that controlled Remo popped one side from its frame and set the heavy sheet of glass on the floor beside the tank.

A sudden hop, and he was gliding wraithlike through the cage. The leaves from a dozen different transplanted subtropical bushes brushed silently against his shins as he moved.