Warren Murphy - Identity Crisis

"Bad news, Smitty."

"Remo," Smith repeated, his voice low and wondering. His eyes searched Remo's face.

"By the time we got to your house, the IRS had seized it," Remo explained. "It's locked up tight as a drum. None of the neighbors knew where your wife went."

"She was here," Smith said softly.

"Here?"

"Last night she came to me. I sent her to her sister's."

"That's a relief."

Smith's voice became low and forceful. "Remo, she told me something incredible."

"Yeah?"

"Why do you regard Remo so strangely, Emperor?" Chiun asked.

Smith's voice dropped to a hiss. "Remo, I know who your father is."

"Since when!" Remo exploded.

"Since last night."

Remo and Chiun looked at each other.

"Look, Smitty," Remo said. "This has been a strain on all of us. Why don't you just take a long nap and we'll come back?"

"No! Remo, I want you to open the door."

"What about your alibi?"

"I may not need one. Now, open the door. Please."

Harold Smith's eyes and voice were so beseeching that Remo felt he had no choice. He undid the latch.

When Smith stepped out, he threw out his long arms and gave Remo a stiff, awkward hug. He buried his gray head in Remo's hard shoulder.

Remo looked over Smith's trembling shoulder to the quizzical features of the Master of Sinanju. Chiun shrugged. Remo gave Smith a vaguely distasteful pat on the back.

"It's all right, Smitty," Remo said gently. "We're glad to see you, too. You can let go now. Okay?"

Smith stepped back, cleared his throat and looked Remo Williams dead in the eye. "When the woman you saw in the cemetery told you that you knew your father, she was exactly right. I have no idea who she really was or how she knew this, but she was correct."

"Yeah..."

"Your father is someone you have known for a very long time."

Remo blinked. His lean forearms trembled briefly. He willed them to be still.

"Someone very near to you for most of your adult life."

Remo's eyes flew wide. He turned.

"Little Father!" he said wonderingly. "You?"

"Never!" snapped Chiun. "I would sooner sire a monkey than one such as you."

"You don't mean that. You can't."

"You are not my son, Remo Williams," Chiun flared.

"He's right," said Smith. "Chiun is not related to you."

Chiun lifted his wispy chin defiantly. "I would not go that far. There may be some Korean blood in him. Possibly three drops. Small ones."

Remo's brow was furrowed up. "If it's not Chiun, that only leaves..."

Harold Smith adjusted his tie primly. Clearing his throat, he said, "Yes. That only leaves me, Remo. I am your father."

"Not a chance!" Remo said hotly. "I'd sooner have Richard Nixon for a dad."

"Remo. My wife explained it all to me."

Remo frowned sharply. "How would she know?"

"She's your mother."

"My mother? No way! I saw my mother in the cemetery the other day. She was young and beautiful-just like I always imagined her."

"I do not know who that woman was, but Maude explained everything. It happened while I was in the Philippines many years ago. She had a baby. That baby was you, Remo."

"No freaking way!" Remo shouted.

"Remo, will you calm down? You will call attention to us all. Maude explained everything to me. She placed you on the doorstep of Saint Theresa's Orphanage, along with a note naming you Remo Williams. "

"Bull!"

"Stop it! Stop this instant! Maude knows nothing of you or your history. How could she relate the precise details of your foundling days if she was not speaking from experience?"

Remo took an uncertain step backward. His face went pale.

"But the woman in the cemetery looked like Freya," Remo said dully. "She said if I found her resting place, I would find my father. How do you explain that?"

"It is a fantasy, Remo. All your life you have wondered about your parents. You created fantasies about them. What you saw that night was just the manifestation of one such fantasy. This is reality. I am your father and Maude is your mother."

"If that's so," Remo said hotly, "why did she dump me on the doorstep?"

"Er, this is awkward," Smith began.

Remo grabbed Smith by his coat lapels and pressed him against the wall. "Talk, Smitty."

"Mrs. Smith had an affair during my absence. She thought the baby-you-had been fathered by this other man."

"What other man?"

"I do not know. She did not identify him."

Remo let go. "This is crazy!"

Smith straightened his coat front stiffly. "She could not face me with a baby of uncertain parentage," he said, "so she abandoned him. I only wish I knew then what I know now."

"I wish I didn't know any of this," Remo said, throwing up his hands. "It's crazy."

"Remo, I know this is hard ...."

"This is stupid. I've met your wife. She's dumpy as an old sofa, a frump."

"Remo! " Chiun admonished. "Do not speak of the emperor's consort so!"

"No way that's my mother!"

"There is no escaping the truth, Remo," Smith said testily. "I wish you would take the blinders off your eyes."

"And you're not my father."

"There is the possibility of that. Mrs. Smith has grown convinced over the years that I am the father to the baby, but there is no proof. This other person remains a possibility."

"Him, I'll accept. You, never."

"But Mrs. Smith remains your mother."

"That will take a blood test, chromosome test and the word of God Almighty to convince me," Remo snapped. "And maybe not even then."

"We will have to deal with this later," Smith said quickly. "I believe I have set in motion events that will eject the Internal Revenue Service from the Folcroft picture."

"What'd you do, call for an exorcist?"

"No. I wove a web of truth and prevarication for Dick Brull's benefit. If it works, we should see results very soon."

"I'll believe that when I see it, too. The IRS are worse than leeches."

"Remo," Smith said, "there is something else you should know-"

A drumming came from the stairwell.

Doom doom doom doom...

Turning, Remo said, "I don't know what's making that racket, but I want a piece if it."

And he was off down the green corridor like an angry arrow.

Chapter 32

Big Dick Brull had just assembled his agents in Dr. Smith's office when the muffled drumbeat returned to haunt him.

"There are still some patients running around loose," he was saying. "Get out the nets and get them back into their rooms. Other than that, until I get to the bottom of this, don't touch anything, don't seize anything and most of all don't do anything"

Doom doom doom doom. . .

"There's that sound again," Agent Phelps said unhappily.

"Damn! Everybody out into the corridors. Before I surrender this seizure, I gotta know what's making that racket."

Big Dick Brull followed his agents from the office.

"It's coming from the stairwell," an agent cried, pointing to the nearest fire door.

"Let's go get it!" Brull snapped. "Surround it! Don't let it get away, or it's your asses!"

A rushing knot, the agents raced to the fire door.

Two hands reached for the latch bar. The door exploded off its hinges in their faces.

Big Dick Brull stumbled back in the face of the reverse stampede of IRS agents.

The drumbeat was suddenly all around them.

Doom doom doom doom doom doom doom...

That was when they got a clear look at the author of the incessant sound.

A HUMAN BULLET, Remo Williams catapulted down the corridor, every sense focused on the elusive sound of a beating drum. He whipped around the corner like a slingshot, saw nothing and let his Sinanju-trained senses carry him after the sound.

His senses took him to the stairwell fire door. Remo spanked it out of his way. It blasted off its hinges and went cartwheeling down the concrete stairs.