Warren Murphy: American Obsession

So the beast picked the toy up by one foot and gave it a hard shake. The Fing boy's pocket change, money clip and keys went skittering over the floor, but he remained limp as a rag.

If Farnham was playing dead, he deserved an Oscar.

Undeterred, Korb the Transcendent felt an urge to take the damned thing apart-not to see what made it tick, but so he could throw the parts around the room. To that end, he put both feet on the toy's chest, grabbed its head under the chin and started to pull.

HEARING THE TREMENDOUS commotion going on inside the private office of Fillmore Fing, Remo and Chiun paused outside the open doors.

The Master pointed through the doorway, then held his nose.

Remo got the picture.

On a silent three-count, they rushed the office entrance.

Inside, they found a monstrous beast beating on the top of a big desk with a man's leg. From the tassle loafer still on the foot, it looked to be a rightie. The rest of the man was scattered around the room, along with a good deal of pocket change.

The beast was having such a great time that he didn't seem to notice he had company. When he saw the newcomers staring at him, however, he stopped what he was doing at once.

"Do you want him or should I take him?" Remo asked, circling purposefully to the left.

The Master shrugged. "It makes no difference to me."

Korb the Transcendent watched both targets, measuring the distance for his leap.

"Okay, then you take him," Remo said.

The beast launched himself at Remo, stretching out full-length in a headfirst dive. Instinctively, Remo spun out of the way, and the beast hurtled on.

Hidden behind the suite's floor-to-ceiling curtain was a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the entire complex and grounds. It was an architectural feature that Korb the Transcendent would not have understood even if he'd known it was there. It came as quite a surprise to the seven-hundred-pound beast when he hit the curtain, then the big pane of glass, which shattered outward, allowing him to fall through the empty frame and out into space.

Howling all the way to the ground, the former computer billionaire dropped ten stories to his death. When Remo and Chiun looked out the window, they saw a small man in a very expensive suit running across the floodlit tarmac below. He was carrying an automatic rifle.

"That looks like the tongue sucker to me," Chiun said.

They watched as Fillmore Fing jumped the heaped bodies of his guards by the gate, climbed into one of the jeeps parked there and turned the key. The engine turned over but didn't catch.

Fing tried again. Same result.

"Come on! Before he gets away!" Remo urged, as he sprinted for the door.

Chapter 37

When Fillmore Fing arrived outside the building's main entrance, he was shocked not to see a jeep waiting there at the security post. For a blinding instant, he thought that all was lost. He could envision the murderous beasts his greed had spawned pursuing him as he raced on foot through the endless rice paddies. Without wheels, he didn't stand a chance.

When he stepped away from the building, he immediately saw the jeeps parked in front of the perimeter fence's main gate. He also saw the men scattered across the ground.

Lots of men.

Had the test subjects already broken loose from the wing? he thought.

Had they wiped out his entire security force? Fillmore didn't trot over to the still forms because he was that curious to know the answer; he trotted over because that's where the jeeps where. Finding out who killed his men was a bonus, of sorts. Unpleasant sorts.

Fillmore didn't have to be a medical examiner to be able to tell how the guards had died. By gunshot. By multiple gunshots at extreme close range. Which pretty much eliminated the test subjects as the murderers. They couldn't tell one end of a gun from another.

As Fillmore moved gingerly through the sprawl of white-putteed corpses, the realization hit him. Just as he had feared, Jimmy Koch-Roche had led the American killers here, to Taiwan. The bodies of his security men were undeniable proof that the assassins were on the grounds, and most likely still alive.

Fing looked over his shoulder, back at the white high-rise monolith of holding tanks, storehouses and office blocks. He had no doubt that whoever had sent the killers here intended the destruction of not only the WHE research program, but of Family Fing Pharmaceuticals itself. And that included its CEO. After all, the assassins had hunted down and killed known users of the drug in the States; they hadn't seized the offending patches and given the users a lecture on substance abuse. Their agenda was annihilation, pure and simple.

Fillmore stepped over the last of the bodies, put the M-16 across the passenger seat and got behind the wheel of the nearest jeep. When he turned the key, the motor growled but didn't start. A cold chill passed down his spine.

This was not the place he was going to die, he assured himself. When he tried the starter again, he got the same, negative result.

The problem was, he wasn't used to driving the damned thing. In desperation, he gave the gas pedal three hard pumps, then flattened it to the floorboards. When he cranked the starter, the engine caught with a roar.

Fillmore gunned the engine, then popped the clutch, jerking and bucking toward the open gate. He got through the gate and into second gear, winding the engine well into the red zone before shifting into third. The road ahead was black and bleak and straight, and his headlights swept across acres of soggy farmland.

He hadn't actually formulated a plan yet. His main concern was in putting as much distance as possible between himself and the Family Fing complex. He was less than a mile from the gate when something bright flashed in his rearview mirror. He looked up to see a pair of headlights.

And they were gaining on him.

For sure, the other driver wasn't Dewayne Korb. Which only left the assassins.

Racking his brain, Fing realized that he couldn't let them catch him on the open road. He wouldn't stand a chance there. Not with a single M-16. His security men had had scads of autoweapons, which hadn't done them any good. He needed cover and a diversion, and there was only one place close at hand to get both.

Fillmore Fing swerved left, taking the company road that dead-ended in the wolverine farm.

CARLOS STERNOVSKY SAT in his dark trailer. He'd been sitting there for hours, unable to turn the lights on, unable to start packing his meager belongings. What he faced was nothing less than professional oblivion. He could never go back and work in the States. Not after what he'd done at Purblind. The slaughter of the lab animals and the theft of his research data would hang like an albatross around his neck forever. No institution, reputable or disreputable, would touch a researcher like him, a man who had proved himself a thief and a vandal of university property. He knew that at that very moment his name, picture and biography were circulating on the World Wide Web home page entitled "America's Most-Wanted Academic Criminals." As far as the scientific community was concerned, Carlos Sternovsky and his wolverine hormone extract were dead meat.

So, if he couldn't resume his life's work-which, despite recent setbacks, he still felt had promise-what could he do? Change his name and get a job at some agribusiness giant? Making food preservatives and flavorings? Stay overseas and find a place for himself in some offshore offshoot of one of the major chemical conglomerates? Designing a new, lemon-scented floor wax for the Third World? And when push came to shove, there was always the last resort: unguentology.

Sternovsky hung his head in his hands.

He was in this position when he heard the wild roar of a jeep approaching at high speed. Knuckling aside the wetness on his cheeks, Sternovsky rose to the trailer window and pulled back a corner of the sun-spotted curtain.