Warren Murphy: Target of Opportunity

"How many Mavis renters bought the farm before the front office decided on that innovation?" asked Remo.

"When our rentals dropped thirty percent in one month," admitted the rental agent.

On his way to the rental lot, Remo stopped to buy six of the biggest pieces of luggage he could find, in bright red leather, an I'm Going to Sam Beasley World T-shirt and a yellow Day-Glo Welcome to Florida acrylic baseball cap.

He carried them balanced on one upright palm in a stack that teetered right, then left, then right again and threatened to fall countless times but never did because the stack, precarious as it was, had become one with his perfectly balanced body.

At the foot of the escalator Remo paused only to step on the free hand of the urban predator who had earlier tried to pick his pocket and was now trying to free a baggy pant leg from the stalled escalator treads.

Under the brief pressure of Remo's foot, the metacarpals became the base ingredient of gelatin.

"You again. Damn, I gonna sue you ass off."

"Have your lawyer call my lawyer," Remo called cheerily.

"What your lawyer's damn name?"

"Alan Dershowitz. And don't let him tell you any different."

Remo walked out of the airport and into the morning humidity of Florida, whistling. He was a tall lean man with dark deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, a cruel mouth and wrists like railroad ties.

The car was waiting for him, and to the horror of the lot attendant, Remo stacked the red leather tourist luggage in the back seat until it resembled a Lucite luggage rack, put on his yellow Welcome to Florida baseball cap and drew the colorful Sam Beasley World T-shirt over his own.

"Sir, I would not recommend doing that."

Remo slid behind the wheel. "Which is I-4?"

The attendant pointed to an exit. "That one. Whatever you do, don't take it into the city dressed as you are. Take International Drive or the Beeline Expressway."

"Thanks," said Remo, tooling the car out of the lot and onto Interstate 4.

He drove slowly, taking his time. After all, he had two or three hours until Sam Beasley World opened, and there were more interesting things to do than sit around a stuffy hotel room.

Like his job.

As he cruised along I-4, Remo wondered what his job was anymore.

He hadn't filled out a 1040 since the day over twenty years ago when the state of New Jersey had pronounced a death sentence on him and taken away his past life with a single jolt of low-amperage electricity while he sat strapped in the electric chair, a Newark cop convicted of a murder he had never committed. After that day Remo Williams ceased to exist, to his friends and the Internal Revenue Service alike.

Had he been obliged to fill out a 1040 every April, Remo would have written "assassin" in the space designated occupation.

He was no run-of-the-mill assassin. He was America's secret assassin-or had been until he had quit CURE, the supersecret government agency that had framed him in the first place. His job-when he had been employed-was to serve as the sanctioned killer arm of CURE, an organization that had been set up in the early 1960s by a young President who, ironically enough, had himself succumbed to an assassin's bullet.

Remo was not an assassin the way the man who had murdered that President had been an assassin. That guy was a loner, a loser and flake. And he used a rifle.

Remo carried no weapon. He was a weapon. His entire body had been trained to the ultimate in human achievement. The key was the human brain. Scientists had long ago figured out that the average person used barely ten percent of his brainpower. It was like using one lobe of one lung to breathe-which is how most people actually breathed when you got right down to it.

Long before there were scientists to discover this deficiency, the head of an obscure fishing village in what was now called North Korea had discovered this truth and learned to unlock the limitless potential of the human machine.

He had been the first Master of Sinanju. His descendants, of whom Remo was a spiritual if not blood heir, had been trained by the Masters of Sinanju who followed in his awesome footsteps.

The House of Sinanju had been the secret power behind the great thrones of the ancient world, and now in the modern world it stood unknown, unseen and unstoppable beside the leader of the greatest nation in human history in the person of Remo Williams, who had been trained by the last pure-blooded Master.

For twenty years, he had served America and its Presidents, good and bad, honest and not, through CURE, a secret offshoot of the executive branch.

No more. There were some loose ends to tie upnamely the question of his own ancestry, since Remo had been an orphan-but after they were taken care of, he was a free agent. No more CURE. No more Harold W Smith, who ran it. No more running his tail off dealing with America's increasingly unsolvable problems.

Of course, there were some problems Remo considered worth solving.

Like the problem of tourist murders in Florida.

It has gotten so that every week there was a new dead Florida tourist. It was bad for America's image, the President had complained to the press. Bad for Florida tourism, the governor had added. Remo Williams didn't care about America's image or Florida's tourist industry any more than he cared about John Wayne Bobbitt's prospects for romantic bliss.

Innocent tourists he cared about.

Which is why, since he was already on his way to Sam Beasley World to tie up a loose end, Remo didn't mind dealing with it.

Trouble was, no one was taking the bait. Remo turned on the radio and found some Barry Manilow music and cranked it up full blast. Maybe that would draw flies. It sounded treacly enough.

Remo got all the way into the city of Furioso without being rammed from behind, sideswiped or car-jacked. The disappointment showed on his strongboned face.

He found a turnoff and sped back to the airport.

"I have a complaint," Remo told the rental parking-lot attendant as he got out.

"The car is not satisfactory?" said the attendant, who didn't know what surprised him most, the complaint or the fact that the customer was still living.

"It is not."

"What appears to be wrong with it?"

"Too inconspicuous," said Remo.

The lot attendant blinked.

"Sir?"

Remo looked around the lot. He pointed. "I want that one."

In a far corner of the lot was a car identical to the one Remo had just driven back, except that it was Christmas red.

"It's the same."

"I like the color better."

"Oh, I can't let you have that one. It has an old tag on it."

"Looks fine to me," said Remo.

"But, sir, the tag says Mavis Rental Agency. You'd stick out like a sore-"

The attendant looked at Remo in his Day-Glo outfit, the red leather luggage that crammed the entire back seat, and swallowed the rest of whatever he was going to say.

"I want it," Remo insisted. "I'm the customer, and the customer-"

"-is always right," the attendant echoed. Wearily he handed Remo the keys.

"Mind transferring my luggage?" asked Remo. "I forgot to buy paint."

The attendant was only too happy to comply and help a tourist in the last sweet minutes of his foolish life, and when Remo came back he stood idly by while Remo shook a can of orange safety paint and inscribed the word TOURIST on the sides and rear window of the rental car.

Remo stepped back, admiring the way the vibrant orange letters clashed with the red body paint.

"How's that look?"

"Loud," the attendant said. "But it suits you, actually," he added with a glassy smile.

"See you on the trip back," said Remo, getting in.

"It's the Christmas season, and miracles do happen," the lot attendant said weakly as Remo drove off again, fodder for the next morning's tragic headlines.