Warren Murphy: Identity Crisis

"God go with you, Remo Williams," she had said, shaking his hand with a firm detachment that said,

"We have done our best with you. Visit if you like, but this is no longer your home."

The coolness had stung. But in later years Remo had understood. He was responsible for himself now.

Other faces came. He saw his police-academy instructor, his Marine D.I., Kathy Gilhooly, whom he planned to marry before his old life had ended. The judge who sentenced him appeared. So did his lawyer. They had been bought off-although Remo hadn't known it then. The bitter lemony features of Harold W Smith, the man who had engineered the frame, swam into view. Remo made him go away. He skipped over the wrinkled countenance of the Master of Sinanju. He would be of no help now.

A laughing little girl's face came after a while. Freya, his daughter by Jilda of Lakluun, the blond Viking warrior woman he had encountered during one of his trips to Korea. They were far from him now, safe from the dangerous life Remo led. Remo's face softened as he looked upon his daughter again. He hardly knew her, really. And in his mind's eye, Remo thought he could see a little of his own face in hers.

There was something about Freya's face that struck a deep, half-forgotten chord. Remo held the little girl's features before his mind's eye, turning the image sideways, trying to pin the inkling down.

It was there. Something was there. But it was elusive.

Remo refused to let it go.

In the gray hours before dawn, he thought he saw a new face. A woman's face. He had never seen the face before. Not as an adult. But it was familiar to him somehow.

Her face was an oval, and her hair hung down long and straight and black. It was a good face, with warm, loving eyes and a high, intelligent forehead. It reminded him of Freya's face. They had the same eyes.

His own eyes still closed, Remo reached out as if to touch her.

The image faded. He tried to summon it again. But it wouldn't come.

Then a voice spoke. "If I could stand up..."

It was a woman's voice. But it wasn't in his mind. It was here. It was near him. His heart rate picking up, Remo opened his eyes.

There was only the grave with the name on it that might or might not be his true one.

Remo started to close his eyes again when the voice came again.

"If I could stand up where I lie..."

The voice was behind him. His ears told him that. But his other senses, the ones that had been raised to the pinnacle of human ability, told Remo there was no living thing behind him. His ears detected no beating heart, no crackle of rib cartilege from expanding lungs, no subtle friction of blood coursing through arteries and lesser veins. The bare back of his neck and arms detected no warning of human body heat.

But the voice sounded real. His sensitive eardrums still reverberated from its echoes.

Remo came to his feet like an unfolding telescope, whirling, alert and ready for anything.

The woman looked at him with infinitely sad yet warm eyes. Her hair was pulled tight off her high, smooth brow, but it was as black as the hair of the woman in his mind's eye. Her eyes were the same deep brown.

"Who-"

The woman continued, as if reciting a tone poem.

"If I could stand up where I lie, I would see mountains in all directions. There is a stream called Laughing Brook. If you find my resting place, you will find me."

"Huh?"

"If you find me, you will find him."

"You must find him, my son"

"Son?" Remo felt his heart jump like a salmon. "Moth-" The word caught in his throat. He had never called a woman that.

"It is too late for me, but your father lives."

"Who is he?"

"He is known to you, my son." The woman lifted a hand and reached out toward him.

Remo started forward, his right hand up and trembling.

Just before his fingers could touch hers, she faded from sight. Remo swept the empty air with his hands, but caught up only dead leaves.

The owl that had been silent for the past hour resumed its eerie call.

"Hoo. . . hoo.. . hoo."

Remo Williams stood at the foot of his own grave and trembled from head to toe. He had not trembled from fear since Vietnam. He had not trembled with anticipation since the last time he had known true love very long ago. And he had not trembled with any longing since he had come to Sinanju.

Now he trembled with all those emotions and more. He had seen his mother. She had spoken to him. He knew this with a certainty that rested not in his brain, but burned hot in the pit of his stomach.

He had not been forsaken after all.

Remo sank to his knees and wept tears of relief into the cool loam of the grave that was not truly his and slept until the rising sun sent its rays through the pink of his eyelids, snapping him to instant wakefulness.

He walked without a backward glance to his waiting car.

He had looked into the mirror of memory and saw true.

It was time to find himself.

Chapter 3

Jack Koldstad hated jeopardy seizures.

They were the worst, nastiest, most dangerous operational responsibilites in his capacity as special agent for the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service. Citizens were ordinarily touchy about being dunned for unpaid taxes or having liens put on their homes and bank accounts. Touchy wasn't the right word, actually. They often went bug-nuts, throwing insane screaming fits, threatening murder if they didn't get their way and promising suicide if that didn't work. The whole psychotic nine yards.

But at least they had some warning. The thirty-day letter. Then if they ignored that, the ninety-day letter. Followed by no-nonsense telephone calls. A series of firm, escalating steps designed to wear down the deadbeats and promote compliance with the tax code. Usually people came across. It was hard to stay mad at someone for months at a time-especially a faceless arm of Uncle Sam like the IRS.

But where a high risk of asset flight was indicated, the IRS was allowed by law to set aside its rules concerning seizure of assets and swoop down without warning. Jeopardy seizures, as the official terminology put it. The question was: jeopardy for whom?

You went in armed with a warrant, breaking down doors if necessary, and confiscated the disputed assets while the tax violator typically screamed for his lawyer. No polite notice. No warning. No nothing.

Usually the noncompliant taxpayer had the living shit scared out of him, and that was more than enough to cut the bull.

Sometimes it was the other way around.

Jack Koldstad had seized the private homes of Mafia dons, corporate criminals and other high-risk tax cheats many times during the course of a long career. Only rarely did he have to negotiate a standoff or swap fire.

Over the past dozen years, that had changed for the worse. It changed with the coming of cocaine and its derivatives, crack, crank and all that evil stuff. It changed with the rise of the drug kingpin with his unlimited financial power and his ruthless willingness to use that power to preserve his empire of white powder. The drug lords were the only group that never learned to fear the cold arm of the IRS.

Once the service began going after the drug barons, the rules of the game changed. Bulletproof vests became standard IRS issue. So did 9mm side arms, shotguns and-this was an IRS first-casualties. Agents began dying in the line of duty. Some were targeted for assassination. The IRS had instituted a policy of allowing agents to interface with the public under sanctioned on-file aliases to protect them from retribution. It was a whole new ball game.

Which was why Jack Koldstad had come to hate jeopardy seizures. Who the hell wants to take a bullet for the tax code?

So there were precautions he had learned to take. Go in in overwhelming numbers, cut off all escape routes and make damn sure the phone lines are down. Otherwise, you could knock on a door, and while your troops are spreading out, the cheat is calling for reinforcements-or worse, the cops. More than once Koldstad had had police officers draw down on his men, thinking they were black hats or some damn thing.