Warren Murphy: Infernal Revenue

A flight of steps led up to this space.

Remo went up like a ghost in a tight black shroud, making no sound, giving forth no scent of fear or other warning of his approach.

If it was a burglar, he was going to be one sorry burglar.

The door was ajar. Remo moved off the top step and without pausing went through the door, ready to meet any threat.

Except the one that grasped the exposed front of his T-shirt and used his forward momentum to propel him across the room and into one of the great windows.

Caught off guard, Remo came off his feet and literally flew across the space, headfirst.

His training kicked in then. There was nothing to grab in flight to arrest him. The windows were too wide for Remo to splay his arms and legs and catch the edges.

So he closed his eyes and willed his body full of air until he felt light in every bone, soft as a pillow and weighing no more than a marshmallow.

He bounced off the glass with no more sound than a nerf ball rebounding off glass. Landing in a crouch, he snapped to his feet, hands jutting like spear points.

"You entered like a water buffalo blundering into quicksand," a cold voice said.

"Huh?"

"But you acquitted yourself in the end. You entered western and you preserved your life by the Eastern way. A balance has been struck, and given the circumstances, neither blame nor shame will attach themselves to you."

"Chiun," Remo breathed, straightening to his full height. "I don't get it. That wasn't your heartbeat I heard."

"Nor was that the Remo I trained whom I flung like a soggy sack of potatoes," countered the Master of Sinanju. "But the Remo who made his body the consistency of a feather-that is the Remo I trained."

"You screwed around with your heartbeat."

Chiun nodded slightly. "Inelegantly put. But accurately put."

Chiun regarded him with opaque eyes as his hands came together, fingers wrapping around the opposite wrists and the wide sleeves of his tiger-stripe kimono coming together to hide all from view.

Two tatami mats had been placed in the center of the room. Chiun indicated them with a tipping of his bearded chin.

"If you will sit, I will sit with you," he offered. Remo hesitated.

"I came here to be alone."

"You came here thinking your teacher was a fool who would chase you to the far provinces of this backward land."

"I wouldn't have come here if I'd known you'd beat me back."

"I do not expect gratitude from an ingrate, but I would not dismiss a compliment directed at my foresight."

Remo folded his lean arms. "Okay, you were way ahead of me. Big deal."

"I will always be ahead of you, Remo Williams. And that is a very big deal. Now sit."

Face hard, Remo stepped up to his mat. Chiun did the same. In unison they crossed their ankles and scissored their legs down into the classic lotus position. They faced each other, spines erect, heads up, eyes locked without outward expression, the Reigning Master of Sinanju and his rightful heir and pupil. Two cultures, two worlds and two sets of conflicting responsibilities between them.

"Great pain, like a cruel raven, has set its talons into your heart, my son," began Chiun.

Remo hung his head. "I killed the wrong man. Practically in front of his family."

Chiun nodded sadly. "This is a tragedy. For them and for you."

"No matter what I do, I can't take it back."

"We give death. Like our best strikes and blows, they can never be taken back once unleashed."

"I don't know if I can do this anymore."

"Mourn?"

"No. Kill."

Chiun wrinkled up his parchment face. "You do not kill. Any fool can kill. Amateurs kill. Soldiers kill. Executioners kill. We dispense correctness. If an evil man vexes a kingdom and there is no army or soldier capable of ending this evil, we are the remedy."

"You sound like Smith."

"All men die in their time. The man you dispatched may have died in his rightful time or ahead of his time. In two, three hundred years, who will know or care?"

"I will. I robbed him of life, of the chance to see his daughter grow up. I ruined the rest of his wife's life."

"Perhaps they will all be reunited in their next life."

"Don't run that reincarnation crap past me. I had a bellyful of it last time out."

Chiun allowed his clear eyes to close briefly. "We will not speak of your last assignment. It ended badly. We are not perfect. Not when we work for whites."

Chiun's bony fingers tightened and came to rest on the draped knobs of his knees. He was silent.

Remo was silent. They stared at each other, faces unreadable.

"What do you wish to do?"

"I'm through with the organization."

"Over one mishap?"

"Twenty years is enough. Smith took from me what I took from that guy, Coe. His life. The only difference is I'm still above ground. But I never got my old life back."

"You wish to be a policeman again?"

"I want ... I don't know what I want. My old life wasn't great. I was going nowhere unless it was toward a desk sergeant's post and early retirement."

"I see," said Chiun.

The gray light of the day filtered through the four high windows, washing out the color of their faces. They might have been two stone idols facing each other down through an eternity of unresolved pain.

"It is Smith's mistake," said Chiun. "You must understand this fully. You were the instrument of his error, but the error was his. You cannot lose sight of that. You are a sword, and a sword has no conscience-"

"Let someone else be Smith's sword-"

Chiun was silent. At length he said, "I have entered into a new agreement with Smith."

"You sign it?"

Chiun hesitated. "No," he said. And Remo was surprised. He was sure Chiun was going to fib.

"Then don't," said Remo.

"I must. Emperor Smith is the only emperor worthy of us in these evil modern days."

"What evil days?"

"There is peace breaking out everywhere."

"There are dozens of brush-fire wars going on."

"Mere incidents. The Russian Empire is no more. China wallows in making money, and Persia has sunk into religious anarchy. I am too young to retire."

"You're one hundred plus."

"And my village needs me. If you will not agree to another year's service, I must do so alone."

Chiun paused. Remo looked at him suspiciously. Always in the past the Master of Sinanju had found ways to manipulate Remo through trickery, sympathy or plain guile. But Chiun seemed sincere, almost resigned, to Remo's decision.

"Leave me out of the contract," said Remo.

Chiun stiffened a little, but his face betrayed no pain. His hazel eyes lifted slightly as if seeking his ancestors above.

"I will do this because it is my duty. Perhaps when your pain is less, my son, you will see things differently."

"Don't count on it."

"I will not," said the Master of Sinanju. Abruptly he came to his feet and departed the room.

Remo stared after him as he slipped down the tower steps, trying to read his body language. He couldn't. Alone in his personal darkness, Remo Williams let out a slow, hot sigh that welled up from the hurtful knot in the deepest pit of his stomach.

His life would never be the same again, he knew. And the knowledge made his throat constrict painfully.

HAROLD W. SMITH'S age-gnarled fingers trembled above the gray rows of keyboard keys as he prepared to plunge into that invisible universe of electronic data some called the net, others called cyberspace but to Harold Smith was such familiar territory it never occurred to him to give it a name.

And if it had, he would have been stumped.

One of the reasons the President who had conceived CURE had selected Harold Smith to head it up was a disarmingly simple one: Harold Smith was a man utterly without imagination. This quality was just as important a qualification as Smith's rock-ribbed patriotism and his unimpeachable rectitude of character.