Warren Murphy: Unite and Conquer

That night Anin could not sleep. It was not merely the snoring coming from the sprawled figures on the rug, nor the metallic scent of blood wafting from the bathroom. It was the nagging feeling that something was wrong.

Why would a person stalk him and take the name of a man who did not exist?

Or did he exist?

Brilliant Nairobi moonlight filtered through the curtained balcony window with a spectacular view of one of the few unscorched skylines of east Africa. It blazed into Anin's open eyes. At least here he felt safe.

A shadow crossed the moon, and in his mind Anin blessed it, for he wished respite from the moonlight and was reluctant to leave the bed for fear he lose it to one of the snoring ones.

The windows were partly open. The balcony was too high off the street to afford an intruder entrance.

In the darkness a soft voice said, "You are the fire."

Anin's eyes snapped open. He turned in his bed.

A shadow loomed. It spoke again. This time in very bad French.

"Je suis L'Eteigneur."

The man was tall and wore a ribbed combat black sweatshirt over many-pocketed black pants. His head was enveloped in a black balaclava that left only the eyes showing. They were merciless, those eyes. And as blue as chips of glacial ice.

"Shoot him! Shoot him!" Anin howled.

In the sleepy dead of the night, this instruction was broadly interpreted.

Those with guns looked about and fired at the gleam of other guns in the moonlight. The room was briefly filled with a nervous popping in which the frantic scamper of fleeing bare feet on the rug was drowned out.

One man, wounded, stumbled about the room, lurching into the tall figure in black.

With a casual gesture the man in black extracted a survival knife from a boot sheath, and with an eyedefying double jerk, slit the exposed throat and wiped the edge of the blade clean of blood on the man's hair before his corpse hit the rug.

The lightning maneuver did not go unnoticed by those militia still in the room.

They saw it, gasped and then the man said, "This is the fate of all who challenge the Extinguisher."

That was all the remaining bodyguards needed to hear. They excused themselves and left Mahout Feroze Anin to his doom.

"I am not who you think," Anin said quickly.

Catfooted, the shadow approached. "You are the fire..."

"Please do not say that to me."

". . . I am the Extinguisher."

"Why do you want to kill me? I have done nothing to you."

"You butchered your people. Sold them into slavery and famine to line your filthy pockets. Did you think no one would know? Did you think no one would care?"

"The international community ceased caring three years ago. It was in all the newspapers. Why should you care?"

"Because I do," the man said tightly. "The Extinguisher cares about the downtrodden. He hears their piteous pleas for a rescuer. And as they are crushed under the boot heels of the tyrants, he solemnly acknowledges their cries for an avenger. I am that avenger. I am the quencher of injustice. The snuffer of evil. The Extinguisher."

"I have money. Much money."

"You don't even have minutes," said the iron voice of the Extinguisher.

"They say you don't exist."

"When you get to hell," said the Extinguisher, "ask the others who went before if Blaise Fury exists. They know. The Extinguisher consigned them to eternal flame, too."

And a weird pistol bristling with clips and drums and other high-tech extensions lifted into view.

It was some manner of machine pistol. There was a drum mounted in front of the trigger guard. It was transparent. The short, ugly bullets sat in a winding spiral within the clear Lucite drum. Their blunt white noses were all pointed at him. And each one had a death's-head painted on its face. Hundreds of hollow eye sockets regarded him mockingly.

Anin was propped up on one hand. Slowly he had insinuated the other one under his pillow. He found the heavy handle of his malacca stick. It was hollow and capable of firing poisoned darts. Steeling himself, he whipped it into view.

He was too late by seconds.

The muzzle-flash was like a stuttering tongue of hellfire.

As he screamed, General Anin saw the tiny skullfaced bullets quiver and march along their spiral track, and felt the hot, unforgiving rounds pounding into his thin chest like a thousand accusatory fingers.

Recoiling, his thumb found the dart trigger. The mechanism sprung. A feathered tuft struck the ceiling with a sharp thunk. It hung over his head like the bitter mistletoe of death.

As he lay staring upward with shocked-open eyes, he heard the heavy tread of doom walk away. The vibration caused the dart to drop free of the shattered plaster. It fell point first, striking his helpless forehead.

Then he knew no more.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo, and he was tying up loose ends. The first loose end to be tied brought him to the heart of Harlem in upper Manhattan.

"I need five-no, make that six-of those heavy-duty galvanized-steel trash cans."

The hardware-store clerk said, "The super-heavy-duties or the super-duper-heavy-duties?"

Remo frowned. They all looked the same to him.

"The ones with the air holes."

The clerk snorted like a friendly bull. "Those ain't air holes. Never heard them called that."

"What are they, then?"

"You got me. Ventilation holes, I guess."

"What's the difference?" Remo asked goodnaturedly.

"Air holes are for breathing through. Ventilation is for letting smelly air out."

"Once I pay for them," said Remo, laying down his Remo Kovacs Discover card, "I can call them whatever I want."

"Yes sir. You got yourself a deal."

The transaction completed, Remo helped himself to six shining galvanized-steel trash cans. He had come by subway from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, which he had reached from Newark Airport after getting off the Boston shuttle. He could have rented a car at the airport or taken a taxi from the bus terminal, but cars had license plates and left tire tracks. A casually dressed pedestrian on the subway blended in with the crowd. Even one in a white T-shirt that showed off his girderlike thick wrists.

Carrying six cans without losing the steel lids would have defeated an ordinary man. Not Remo. He had perfect balance, as well as perfect most everything else.

Removing the lids, he stacked the cans in two sets of three, bent at the knees and wrapped one arm around each bottom can.

When he straightened, the two hollow steel columns lifted with him. They might have been welded together. They didn't even wobble.

The six lids didn't wobble, either, as Remo balanced them on his bare head.

He drew a lot of attention as he sauntered up Malcolm X Boulevard a little past high noon. A beat cop noticed him. It was hard not to be noticed, but the beauty part was that later, when the trash cans turned up with suspicious contents, people would remember clearly seeing a man walking up the street balancing six cans and their lids with malice aforethought but no one would remember Remo's face.

How could they? It was nowhere near as memorable as the lids balanced perfectly on his perfectly aligned head, perched on his perfectly coordinated spinal column, whose unremarkable limbs were perfectly in tune with the rest of him.

In the face of such perfection, Remo's exact features hardly stacked up. So to speak.

The XL SysCorp Building loomed up on Malcolm X Boulevard, the noonday sun reflected in its bluish polarized windows, or rather, in what was left of them.

Most of the windows had been broken or cannibalized for scrap. Those that remained were boarded up with unpainted plywood. There was more plywood than sandwich glass now. A few windows gaped open like black squares in a vertical checkerboard.