Warren Murphy: Infernal Revenue

"And when their tasks were complete," the squeaky voice continued, "they could be disposed of without a second thought, taking the pharaoh's secrets with them."

"I don't know any secrets."

"You have entered the sanctum sanctorum of the emperor I serve."

"Emperor! You're a nut. Wait a minute, this is a nuthouse. Of course you're a nut."

"I am not a nut."

"This is twentieth-century America, and you're talking about pharaohs and emperors and secret palaces. Of course you're a nut. And this is an asylum. Some crazy kind of asylum, but an asylum just the same. I can't believe you got me so worked up over a pipe dream."

So great was Buzz Kuttner's relief that he started laughing. It was a nervous laughter, and he let it go on a long time.

He never felt the bladelike fingernail that slipped easily into his back between two lumbar vertebrae, severing his spinal cord like a soft strand of spaghetti.

Buzz Kuttner was still laughing when he collapsed on the hard floor in the grit of shattered concrete. The laugh became breathy, then trailed off into a long exhalation and ending in a rattle that sounded like a broken continuation of his laughter.

After a silent minute the gaunt shadow returned to the room. He wore gray. His hair was white.

"Your will has been done, Emperor Smith," said the owner of the squeaky voice. He bowed slightly, and a slice of light captured a flash of orange silk whose pattern resembled the stripes of a Bengal tiger.

"Good. Please dispose of the body."

"Where?"

"The coal furnace. Place him inside,"

"If it is your will."

"I would help, but I must get rid of the truck."

A gnarled yellow claw with fingernails like ivory blades gestured toward the array of mainframes and jukeboxes. "All has been accomplished to your satisfaction?"

"Yes," said Harold W. Smith. "CURE is now ready to enter the twenty-first century."

"And once you have returned, you and I will be ready to enter negotiations for further service between your house and mine," returned Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo, and he was whistling into the teeth of the hurricane.

The winds had been clocked at seventy-five miles per hour, and Remo was walking against them. He was whistling "The Wayward Wind," and he could hear every note over the growing roar.

The waters off Wilmington, North Carolina, were flat and oily in anticipation of Hurricane Elvis making landfall as Remo walked along the Wrightville Beach beachfront, where plywood sheets covered the windows of upscale summer homes and cottages. People had spray-painted messages to Elvis on the plywood.

"Elvis Go Home!"

"Elvis, You're All Wet!"

"Go Back Where You Came From!"

As if hurricanes cared.

There was a mandatory evacuation along the beachfront, and almost everyone had left. Except Roger Sherman Coe.

Roger Sherman Coe had elected to ride out the storm in his beachfront home. That was just like Roger Sherman Coe. The law meant nothing to him. The hurricane warning had been posted while Remo was enroute to his rendezvous with Roger Sherman Coe. Remo had put a call to the man from his first-class seat on Flight 334.

"Is this Roger Sherman Coe?" Remo had asked.

"Yes."

"This is Bernard Rubble from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Mr. Coe. We're calling all citizens in your area to personally alert them about Hurricane Elvis."

"I'm staying," Roger Sherman Coe had snapped.

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely."

"Suit yourself," said Remo, who had then hung up and tried to keep the first-class stewardess out of his lap. Stewardesses were that way around him.

Assured that Roger Sherman Coe was determined to ride out the storm in the security of his expensive home. Remo had driven his rental car from the Wilmington airport and walked the last mile toward the beach because the state highway patrol was turning back cars on the main approach road.

Remo hadn't minded walking. The fresh air was good for him. And because this was a simple assignment and he was in a good mood, he couldn't help whistling.

There were a lot of reasons for Remo's good mood, not the least of which was that the man who had taught him to whistle into the teeth of a hurricane had been recalled to headquarters. Remo didn't know the reason for it, and it didn't matter. All that mattered was he had a solid week without complaints about the neighbors, having old soap operas constantly on the television, and carping. Remo especially didn't miss the carping. It usually took the form of Remo being told he didn't truly appreciate the person doing the complaining. Remo's comeback was that he never appreciated people who complained all the time. This invariably produced more carping and led to Remo's pointing out that it was easier to appreciate another person when that person carped less.

So when Upstairs had called him with instructions about the Roger Sherman Coe assignment, Remo had been only too happy to oblige.

The wind plastered the black front of his T-shirt against his lean but muscular chest as Remo walked along the sand leaving no discernible footprints. He would have to think about it to leave footprints because leaving footprints had been drilled out of him.

His chinos, snug against his trim legs, were also black. His dark hair was too short for the wind to mess it up, not that Elvis wasn't trying. Remo leaned into the oncoming wall of wind, walking at a slight angle the way he had seen people on TV news reports trying to negotiate hurricane winds.

Surprisingly it worked for him. The skills that had been drilled into him had taught him not to do the obvious Western thing when confronted with forces greater than he. He was doing the obvious Western thing and he wondered what Chiun would say about that. Maybe the obvious Western thing was sometimes the right thing to do after all.

Remo had no more time to think about it because he had come to the beachfront house numbered forty-seven. That was the number he remembered, but because he had no head for figures or trivia he pulled a sheet of paper out of his chinos pocket and verified it. He had the right house. He let the hurricane winds whip the sheet of paper from his loosening fingers, and it skimmed away like a chattering paper ghost.

Remo shifted direction, walking toward the beachfront house. Now he was walking with one side to the wind. His body, which understood these things better than he, adjusted itself, and Remo found himself walking at an angle, like the hunchback in an old Frankenstein movie.

The weathered-shingle house of Roger Sherman Coe was boarded up like all the others. Unlike the others, there was no spray paint graffiti defiance marring the wobbling plywood sheets. Not that the hurricane cared one way or the other.

Remo knocked on the door. The knock was surprisingly loud for the force Remo seemed to exert. The door shook and the house shook with it.

Evidently Roger Sherman Coe thought it was only the hurricane knocking because he didn't answer on the first knock. So Remo knocked again.

This time Roger Sherman Coe answered. The door whipped inward, and he thrust a pale, lantern-jawed head out.

"Good afternoon," Remo said brightly.

"I'm not leaving. I'm staying. You can't make me."

"I'm conducting a survey for the National Weather Service," said Remo. He smiled. The obvious Western thing would be to scowl. Scowls triggered the fear response and risked flight or retaliation. Smiles relaxed people-sometimes right into the boneyard.

The man looked incredulous. "In the middle of a hurricane?"

"Hurricanes tend to focus the mind," Remo assured Roger Sherman Coe. "We get better answers that way."

Roger Sherman Coe looked at Remo's empty fingers at the ends of his unusually thick wrists, and asked, "Where's your questionnaire?"