Warren Murphy: The Color of Fear

But knowing Dr. Harold W Smith, the man already had his people on this ruckus in Virginia.

The President just hoped the bodies wouldn't make too high a pile this time. Last time had been a bitch.

Chapter 4

At Richmond's Byrd International Airport a minor skirmish broke out when Flight 334 from Boston landed and one Franklyn Lowell Fisk deplaned in Union blue.

As it happened, a civil engineer named Orel Ready simultaneously deplaned from a flight from Atlanta, wearing Confederate gray.

They encountered one another at the baggage carousel.

Ready took one look at Fisk and Fisk at him, and pungent characterizations were exchanged with the riddling vehemence of canister fire. A small but intrigued crowd gathered.

It might have blown over except for the regrettable fact that their baggage arrived just then. In the heat of the moment Ready pulled his cavalry saber from his Tourister luggage, and Fisk extracted his fully functioning Third Model Dragoon commemorative pistol with its walnut grips and 24-karat gold trigger guard and back strap from an overnight bag.

They glared at one another for an eternity of dislike.

"Bushwackin' Johnny Reb!" Fisk snarled.

"Back stabbin' blackguard!" Ready retorted.

History never recorded the name of the instigator of the Byrd International Airport Skirmish. Some witnesses swore that Ready lunged at his opposite while others averred that Fisk let fly with a .44-caliber Minie ball in a cloud of black powder smoke before the sword point could begin to move toward his heart.

Either way steel flashed and lead flew-but neither man flinched at the specter of incoming death.

Which was just as well, because they were in no immediate danger.

NO ONE NOTICED the wispy little Asian man in black bustle out of the fringes of the gathering crowd. He stood at least three heads shorter than most, and all eyes were fixed on the two combatants. Or on their weapons, rather.

In the blink of an eye something broke the lunging saber in midstroke. During that eye blink-caused by the discharging of the mail-order replica Dragoon-a force no one saw and both antagonists felt deflected the Minie ball from the dark gray breast of Orel Ready.

With a metallic clang, the ball caromed off something and buried itself into a khaki knapsack that just happened to come sliding down the baggage chute.

When the echoing report stopped and eyes flew open, Frank Fisk stood with Orel Ready's saber seemingly buried in his unprotected stomach while the Dragoon muzzle lay smoking over Ready's heart.

Fisk and Ready each sized up his situation at the same time.

"Dear Lord, Ah am undone," Ready howled.

"You have run me through, you rebellious Johnny," Fisk moaned.

Then both men promptly fainted dead away. Ready still held on to his saber, which-when it came away from Fisk's chest-was shown to have been sheered off to a blunt end like a broken butterknife. There was no smoking hole over Ready's heart, either. Nor any exit wound. No blood, either.

The crowd gathered closer to inspect the honored fallen of the Byrd International Airport Skirmish. An insurance agent from Savannah was the one who found the broken saber tip lying under the men, and held it up so the round dent in the fine-tempered steel could be seen by one and all.

"Day-am!" he said. "'Pears to me the ball broke the tip off this frog-sticker and saved both their lives."

WALKING AWAY from the altercation, Remo said to the Master of Sinanju, "Nice move, Little Father. You avoided a major battle back there."

"You could have helped," sniffed Chiun.

"I'm on strike."

"Does this mean that you are a union sympathizer?"

"I'm an Ex-Marine. That means I'm in sympathy with nobody who puts on a uniform they haven't earned. Why do you ask?"

"Union sympathizers are always going on strike in this mad nation."

"This isn't that kind of union," said Remo.

"What kind is it?" asked Chiun.

Noticing fistfights breaking out all over the airport, Remo grumbled, "A weak one if you ask me."

"All republics are destined to collapse from within."

As they passed knots of belligerents, Chiun took the opportunity to drift up to some of the more hotheaded and surreptitiously inserted a long fingernail into the fray.

The nail flicked in and out so swiftly that when those stung by it finished yelping and examining themselves for puncture wounds, they never connected the insult with a tiny little man in black who glided past, a serene and unconcerned expression on his wrinkled countenance.

Very quickly the airport was evacuated and bee catchers were called in to deal with what airport officials insisted were "a swahm of teeny-tiny killer bees."

But no infestation of bees was ever found.

Thus ended the Skirmish of Byrd International Airport, about which songs would one day be sung.

THE AIRPORT car-rental agent looked Remo and Chiun over with a critical eye. "North or South?" he asked.

"North," said Chiun.

"That's not the north he means," Remo told Chiun.

"What north do you mean?" demanded the rental agent in a suspicious tone.

"He thinks you mean North Korea," said Remo.

"That where he hails from?"

"Yes," said Chiun. "I am hailed in North Korea."

"One north is as bad as another, carpetbaggers," the agent snapped. "Ah ain't renting you no car." He pronounced it "cah."

"That your last word on the subject?" inquired Remo in a cool voice.

"Cross mah heart and hope to die humming 'Dixie.'"

As it turned out, these were the last words the stubborn rental agent ever spoke. For the rest of his life, he hummed. Doctors could find no explanation for his voice-box paralysis. Many articles were written, and medical texts were revised to include the condition, but no similar case ever again surfaced.

All the agent knew was that a thick-wristed hand reached for his face, and while his eyes were fixed on that looming hand, a thumb came out of his left peripheral field of vision and did something sudden and unpleasant to his Adam's apple.

After that, all he could do was hum. And glumly surrender the car keys to the outstretched hand.

Remo drove south. It seemed pleasant country, very green and picturesque. Farms predominated, but there were lowlying swamps, too. Every mile or so signs dotted the land proclaiming this colonial site or that preserved attraction. At first it was interesting. After a while the signs blurred past in unending and mindnumbing numbers.

The surviving chimneys of homes that had been burned flat by the Federal Army of the Potomac during the Siege of Petersburg were carefully maintained like precious scars in the lush countryside. Wherever a Confederate officer, horse or camp dog had fallen, the site was commemorated by a carefully painted and maintained sign or marker. There were Confederate cemeteries galore. Once, the highway actually cut through a large burial ground whose flagdecorated tombstones lined the shoulder of the road.

"Why do these people flaunt the shame of their many defeats?" Chiun asked.

"Search me," said Remo, paying attention to his driving. "Maybe they like to complain, like some other people we both know," he added.

Chiun maintained an injured silence.

After a while Remo remembered something. "I thought Paris was killed during the Trojan War, before he could run off with Helen of Troy."

"Gossip," Chiun said dismissively.

"So what's the real poop?"

"Paris feigned his death and they eloped to Egypt in secret. Some claim that King Proteus slew Paris to win fair Helen, but in truth Paris, driven to distraction by his bride's unendurable snores, committed suicide. Any anti-Korean slander to the contrary is baseless and untrue."

"Wait a minute! Did the House ever work for King Proteus?"