Warren Murphy - Identity Crisis

Remo had tracked him down on Smith's orders. And killed what was later discovered to be an innocent man in front of his wife and daughter. Their horrified faces still haunted Remo, shocking him enough to question his role as a secret assassin for an even more secret arm of the United States government.

When Chiun had balked at another year's service because of the missing shipment of gold, Remo already had one foot out the door.

The trouble continued piling up from there. CURE's computers became unreliable. Something somehow had managed to sever Harold Smith's direct telephone line to the President of the United States. CURE was cut off from the one US. official who knew it existed.

It was a masterful plan, and CURE should not have survived. But it had. The gold had been recovered. Friend had been deactivated as he was consummating a brilliant attempt to blackmail the U.S. government through computer manipulation designed to paralyze the federal banking system.

But the damage had been done. CURE had been hobbled, and all Remo cared about now was uncovering his past. The future would take care of itself.

And now this.

Remo wondered if the President had had something to do with this. Smith hadn't been getting along with the new President. They were like oil and water. And Friend had managed to divert the last of CURE's operating funds from its offshore bank. Smith had been trying to trace the lost taxpayer funds for over a week now. The President had not been happy to hear about that. The very existence of CURE offended him.

Maybe, Remo mused, he had decided to lower the boom this way.

Stepping to the ground, he decided to find out.

Moving low, Remo made his way to the sound. He eased into it, the cool water swallowing his bare feet. He had stepped out of his Italian loafers. The water drank his thighs, his waist and, after his dark hair dipped into the cool blue surface, the water regathered as if he had never been there.

No disturbance marked Remo's progress. He swam effortlessly, arms trailing loosely, feet kicking easily. So quiet was his progress that a sunfish failed to notice him until Remo had already passed his line of sight. Then it twisted away in staring-eyed panic.

When the rotting piles of the Folcroft dock-a relic of some long-ago period before Folcroft had been built-came into view, Remo arrowed toward the ground.

He came out of the water like a seal, on his stomach. The entire operation was soundless.

Lying on the mud, Remo lifted his head.

The smell of blood was still strong. Over the L-shaped brick building that was the headquarters for CURE, the three circling birds still described their tight looping pattern. Remo focused on them.

For the first time since he had embraced the sun source called Sinanju, his eyes failed him. The birds remained black against the sky of the new day, like living shadows. Remo couldn't make out their true color, never mind their markings and distinguishing features.

Not sea gulls, not vultures, not really like any birds he knew.

The skin along his bare forearms tightened with a vague fear.

Remo shifted his gaze to the window he knew was Harold Smith's. He didn't expect to see into it. The opacity of the one-way glass defeated even his sharp eyes.

The window was broken. Through the angular hole in the pane, Remo spotted figures moving about. Men in suits. Men who didn't belong in Harold Smith's office.

There was no sign of Smith.

Remo shifted his gaze. The water was draining from his clothes, and he was willing his body temperature to rise by fifteen degrees. That would take care of the remaining dampness in his clothes.

There were Cigarette boats beached in the mud not far from him. They were empty. The ground around the rise when the mud became high ground had been chewed up by feet and something more vicious.

The air was thick with stale gunpowder smell, Remo noticed. Digging his fingers into the tiny burrow in the mud, he pulled out an intact 9mm round.

Someone had attacked Folcroft by boat. That much was clear. But who had fought them back? Although Folcroft was technically one of America's most secret installations, Smith had never installed sophisticated security systems. There was only a single lobby guard, no barbed wire or electrified fences, no motion-sensing detectors or other such safeguards. Smith believed that installing such trappings would merely serve to advertise Folcroft's importance. He might as well string up Christmas lights that spelled out Secret High Security Installation. Do Not Enter.

It was Smith's New England sensibleness that betrayed him. Folcroft had been assaulted and taken. It had never happened before.

When Remo's clothes were dry enough to leave no dripping trail, he got up off his flat stomach and started to reconnoiter.

There were men standing about the Folcroft entrance, men in black fighting suits with various assault weapons slung from shoulders and belts. They smoked nervously. The way they hung their heads and slumped their shoulders jarred.

Their bodies screamed failure, not victory.

Remo spotted the letters DEA on the back of one man's jacket.

It didn't exactly clarify the situation, so he moved off to the southern exposure.

He knew Chiun had been sleeping in the Folcroft basement, guarding the gold he had wrangled from Smith until arrangements to ship it to Sinanju could be finalized. The Master of Sinanju had not let Remo forget it. Remo was supposed to take the day trick. And he was a half hour late.

Remo figured Chiun would be with the gold. When he found Chiun, he would start to find some answers.

Remo made it to the freight entrance without being spotted. Once he passed a DEA agent pissing behind a parked car. The man never so much as smelled the odor of sea salt clinging to Remo's clothing.

The corrugated freight door looked as if King Kong had punched his fist through it. The force was clearly outward, not inward. Chiun leaving. Only the Master of Sinanju could split corrugated steel so neatly down the middle before forcing the hole open.

Remo went in anyway.

The basement was dim and musty. The concrete floor sloped downward. There were no sounds or smells of intruders.

Remo reached Chiun's sleeping mat, found the hastily discarded sleeping kimono on the floor and understood that the assault had come with the dawn. Chiun had been lying here when the shooting had started and flung his sleeping kimono aside in his haste. Normally the Master of Sinanju was too fastidious to toss it aside so carelessly.

Remo went to the triple-locked door in an otherwise blank concrete wall. In the dark his eyes saw true. The locks were secure, the door closed. That meant the gold was safe. It was probably the chief reason those DEA agents were lounging about the front lawn and not floating as dismembered body parts on the sound being nibbled at by the fishes.

From behind the door came a bitter tang. Not blood. Certainly not gold, which hadn't a specific smell, although Chiun had long insisted that he could smell gold at a distance of six Korean ri-about three miles.

Remo eased up to the door. He retreated suddenly, holding his nose. The smell was burned plastic. Smith's computers. He had destroyed them. Not a good sign. Smith would sooner take the poison pill he kept in the watch pocket of his vest than destroy his precious mainframes.

The realization hit Remo then. "Damn!"

Reversing, he made for the stairs. The worst had happened. Smith was by now either dead or dying.

"Damn that Smith," Remo hissed. "What the hell's wrong with him? The IRS isn't the KGB."

He glided up the stairs.

There goes my last hope of tracking down my parents, Remo thought bitterly.

An IRS agent was standing guard at the top of the stairs. He made the mistake of challenging Remo.