Warren Murphy: Fool's Gold

The code word was Shiva and Barry looked it up in the encyclopedia that had come with the house. Shiva was an eastern god, known as the Destroyer of Worlds.

He looked back at the computer. He saw patterns of training on a graph. He saw where an ancient house of assassins had created a single effective killing arm for a secret organization, the first white man ever to learn those skills. He knew that because there were some old questions more than a

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decade before about whether the student could learn. It was all right there on the TV screen.

What a fantastic idea, he thought. The greatest assassins that ever lived, tiny Orientals, infusing their knowledge and power into a white man. And why not? The white man could be Hamlet.

He was so excited he called Hank Bindle at home.

"Okay, we got it," yelled Barry into the telephone. "Hamlet gets training from assassins. The greatest assassin who ever lived. An Oriental."

"No," said Bindle.

"But the teacher is Korean, see. He's got to be Korean because this one house of assassins is the sun source of all the martial arts. You see, martial arts get weaker the more they get away from the original power these people taught. Everything else is an imitation. People saw these Koreans in action and imitated them. That's why all the martial arts come from the east."

"No way," said Bindle. "Chopsaki. Bruce Lee. A five million dollar picture that grosses fifteen million. We're talking about a twenty-two million budget. The guy has got to be white."

So Schweid made the teacher white. It didn't hurt, because he had the whole story. Right on the computer, there were hundreds of cases of intrigue and danger and how the pupil had created solutions through force.

Barry had the script done in three days. He thought it was grand, maybe even the best thing he had ever copied.

"No, absolutely not," said Bindle. "Where is the woman in danger? Where are Hamlet's problems?

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You've got to think he can't make it before he makes it. Nobody is going to care about some guy who goes flip-a-finger and kills somebody. Have the finger break off. Have him bleed. Have him suffer. And then he wins."

"And gets the Danish broad with the big knobs," said Marmelstein.

"I like it," said Bindle.

"It'll jiggle," said Marmelstein.

But Barry Schweid was a bit nervous about returning to the computer. The story lines he had seen there had seemed real and in every one of them, people had really died. It explained many killings in the world which had been unsolved.

He looked at the computer reports for a long afternoon before deciding to plunge ahead. After all, how could it all be true? So many killings by one secret assassin?

And besides, he wasn't into politics. He was a creative artist, and he had a right to follow his muse, no matter what it told him to copy.

So he started writing.

Five

The gardener had been taking the unwanted rose blossoms for his daughter.

And so the gardener would die.

He would die piece by piece. The bullets would carve him like a chisel.

But save the legs for last. That would enable him to try to run.

The roses were just an excuse. Walid ibn Hassan needed to blood his new Mauser with the special .348 long barrel. There were those who preferred to use only paper targets before work, but those were lesser gunmen. They did not have tradition.

Back before guns, Walid's great-great-grandfather would not use a sword unless it had been cured in the body of a strong man, according to the Arab tradition for the manufacture of good steel blades. The Spaniards would use oil, and the Italians water to quench the red-hot steel of a sword.

But the really good steel, the Damascus blade of the Arabs, had to be quenched in blood.

Walid was enough of a realist to understand that the water in the blood did the quenching of the

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steel. But he also understood the real meaning of curing a blade like that. It meant the weapon was for killing. It was not for ornament and it was not for beauty. It was a killing tool.

And that was why, this day, in his mansion overlooking the blue Mediterranean of the Tunisian coastline, he waited for his gardener to steal one more rose.

The bushes were in blossom and the perfume blended with the vigorous salt of the Mediterranean and breezes coming in from Crete and Greece and the wondrous places where man first laid the foundations of Western thought.

Walid ibn Hassan saw the gardener's red and white checkered kaffiyeh come around the high stone wall. He saw it pause and go down as the man picked a rose blossom, go further and then down as he picked yet another.

Walid could have used the cook. The cook was stealing meat from the kitchen. But the cook was fat and could not run, so Walid waited for the gardener.

He saw the kaffiyeh go down, then up, then down, then up, and then the man came around the bend of the wall, smiling.

In his robe, he cradled seven perfect blossoms.

He came to Walid ibn Hassan and offered to show how beautiful they were.

"You grow the finest roses in Tunisia. Nay, the entire North African coast," the gardener said.

"Thank you, friend. You are not just a servant. You are a son to me."

"Thank you, Pasha ibn Hassan," said the gardener.

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"But I only see seven blossoms."

"Yes," said the gardener. His eyes could not stay away from the gun.

"You bent down ten times."

"Did I, great Pasha?"

"Where are the other three blossoms?" Walid asked.

"They were not fit to grace your home. I have them in my pocket."

"And what do you do with those blossoms you keep in your pocket?"

"Those," the gardener said with a laugh, "those are not nearly good enough for your house. Not nearly. I give them to my daughter."

"You give my roses to your daughter. I have been like a compassionate father to you, and you take my roses in return?"

"But you would not use them, O Pasha."

"That is not for you to decide. When one takes a gift instead of waiting for it to be given, that then is stealing."

"Oh no, great one."

"Still I am compassionate and generous. I am your friend and a man of honor. You may run. I will not shoot you close-up for your thievery. Run."

The gardener fell to his knees, crying "Please."

"Run or I will shoot you here and you will see the end to my compassion."

The gardener stood up, trembling.

"Run," said Walid ibn Hassan and, true to his word, he did not fire until the man was fifty yards away. At that point, he sent a slug into the flailing left hand and got the first finger. At sixty yards he got the second finger and at seventy he had to take

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the hand. By a hundred yards, the hand was a stump on the wrist, breathing blood.

Hassan had the Mauser at his cheek and working well. She was a good gun. She took a piece out of the right shoulder, and at 180 yards when the distance was becoming too great for perfect accuracy, she put a perfect slug into the left knee.

It dropped the man. Hassan worked his beauty, quickly, before the man could die of blood loss. He took off the feet, changing clip after clip to keep shooting.

The gardener twitched and jerked each time Hassan's beauty sent a lead kiss across the grounds to their target. She tortured the man beautifully, even taking off his manhood, and when she was asked, she sent the gardener to eternity with a shot through the eye.

Walid ibn Hassan kissed his beauty on her grip and very tenderly put her into a velvet case. She was ready.

The gardener would be buried among the roses where his body could, in death, nourish the roots as he had in life.

Hassan had cured his weapon in blood.

He was ready. That afternoon he was on an airplane bound first to Mexico City and then to the nation of Hamidia. To get his beauty through all the airport checks, he had her disassembled into several sections; but finally, after the flight from Mexico by a small airplane to the People's Democratic Republic of Hamidia, he was at the gates of the People's Liberation Palace with his beauty, as he had been instructed to be.