Warren Murphy: Ghost in the Machine

"Me?" said Remo Williams, looking the man directly in the eye. "I did a tour in Nam, in between pounding a beat."

Lewis looked his disbelief. "You're a cop?"

"Not anymore. I moved up. Work for the government now."

"Doing what?"

"Hunting weasels."

The man calling himself Lewis Theobald locked gazes with the man pretending to be Edgar Perry. Neither man flinched.

Finally Theobald said in a cool, toneless voice, "Weasels?"

"Yeah. The human kind. Guys who can't be caught any other way."

"I don't follow . . . ." Theobald said, his voice edgy.

Remo shrugged nonchalantly. "Serial killers. Whitecollar types. The big bad guys even the Feds can't touch. Supersecret stuff."

"FBI?"

"Not even close," Remo said.

An overweight woman wearing too much Chanel No. 5 dragged a balding, bespectacled husband over and said, "Eddie! Eddie Perry! Pam said you'd shown up! How are you?"

"Young as ever," Remo quipped.

"Go on. You look ten years younger than the rest of us."

"More like twenty," Remo quipped.

The overweight woman smiled through her confusion, and Remo said, "You remember Lew."

"Lew?"

"Lewis Theobald."

The supposed Lewis Theobald smiled hopefully.

"Did you go to school with us?" she asked doubtfully.

"I've been in Ohio since '77," Theobald said, flushing. "I'm the one who chopped the head off the frog in Biology."

"Do tell."

The woman dragged her compliant husband off.

"Where were we?" Remo said.

"Discussing your work. With weasels."

"Right. I'm the top weasel-catcher for Uncle Sam."

"Why have I never hear of you?"

"Only weasels ever hear about me. And when they do, it's already too late for them."

The supposed Lewis Theobald took a sip of pumpkin-colored champagne and smiled knowingly. "Who would have thought that Edgar Perry would go to work for the Central Intelligence Agency?"

Remo smiled back. The smile, under his deep-set dark eyes, made his high-cheekboned face resemble a death's-head. He was rotating his hands absently. It was a habit he had when he was about to zero in on a hit. The unaccustomed shirt cuffs chafed his thick wrists. He hated wearing jacket and tie, but this was a class reunion. Besides, Upstairs was especially nervous about excessive exposure. Especially after Remo's most recent plastic surgery.

Let Manuel "The Weasel" Silva think he worked for the CIA. It wasn't true. And Manuel the Weasel was not known to be afraid of the CIA. He was not known to be afraid of anything.

Here, at the Class of '72 reunion, no fear showed in the eyes of the man pretending to be Lewis Theobald. He had no reason to suspect that the person he thought was Edgar Perry was anyone other than who he claimed to be. To think otherwise would have been too unbelievable a coincidence.

Ever since the Gulf War, and the collapse of his main patron, Soviet Russia, Manuel "The Weasel" Silva had become a human hot potato. The most feared and successful terrorist of the last twenty years, responsible for masterminding a horrific string of hijackings, political murders, and bombings, Manuel had been kicked out of Syria several times. Usually to Libya. The Libyans, who had more to fear from U.S. intervention than the Syrians, invariably kicked The Weasel back to Damascus. Even Baghdad didn't want Manuel the Weasel.

Finally, Manuel disappeared on his own. He had been traced to Montreal, traveling on a falsified Australian passport. There, the trail had disappeared. Washington put its security forces on a higher state of alert, fearing a direct attack by Silva. None had come.

Upstairs, through his vast computer network, had picked up a few clues. Nothing definitive. But through careful work, a pattern had emerged. A bizarre one.

Manuel had not entered the U.S. to commit random acts of terror. He had come to assume a new identity.

The identity of Lewis Theobald, who was found dead in his Akron, Ohio, apartment, his spinal cord severed by a thin, flat blade that had entered through the back of his neck.

It had been a trademark of The Weasel to assassinate his victims in that way. It was the first solid clue Upstairs had gotten. And when Lewis Theobald's parents were both found murdered in the same way in their Miami condominium, Upstairs recognized what no law enforcement agent in the nation could have: The Weasel was erasing anyone who could prove that Lewis Theobald was no longer Lewis Theobald.

When the new Lewis Theobald relocated to Buffalo and opened up a print shop, Upstairs decided to act. The occasion of the class reunion had provided the perfect neutral ground, where Manuel would never dream of coming armed.

Just as he would never imagine that he would meet his assassin.

"Who said I worked for the CIA?" Remo whispered.

The Weasel shrugged. The dead face of Lewis Theobald looked at Remo through the laminated holder with blank, uncomprehending eyes. The eyes of Manuel held a hint of suspicion. He was trying to figure out if he was being stalked or not.

"If you're not FBI or CIA, then who could you work for?"

"It's called CURE," Remo volunteered brightly.

"CURE? That's one I never heard of."

"No surprise there," Remo said easily, smiling to put the man off his guard. "Officially we don't exist."

"Oh?"

"They set it up back in the sixties," Remo went on casually. "Strictly as a counterintelligence organization. One guy runs it. Directly answerable to the president. No official staff, no official payroll. Not even an office in Washington. That way, if things go wrong, it can be shut down inside an hour."

"Are you saying you're the person who runs this organization?"

"Nope. I'm its one agent. The enforcement arm."

Manuel the Weasel allowed himself an easy smile. His confidence was returning. Remo knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that Edgar Perry was trying to impress him with a cock-and-bull story. That Edgar Perry probably only worked for the Defense Investigative Service, or some similar low-level federal organization, and was trying to make himself sound more important than he was.

"Not much of an organization," The Weasel remarked. "One spymaster. One agent."

"Remember what they said about the Texas Rangers."

Manuel looked blank. Naturally, he would. He was a Basque Separatist, and wouldn't know the Alamo from a car rental agency.

Remo said, "One Riot. One Ranger. I'm sort of like that."

"Ah, I see. This is very interesting."

"Look," said Remo, looking furtively around. "I shouldn't really be talking to you about this. After all, we are a secret."

Manuel made no attempt to conceal his amused smile. "Supersecret, you said."

"Yeah. Yeah. Right."

"Why don't we retire to the other room?" Manuel suggested. "I would like to hear more about this . . . CURE."

"Why not? After all, we dissected frogs together."

Manuel threw back his head with a nervous laugh and guided Remo into the dining area. He shook his free arm and Remo heard the thin, flat knife slide from a hidden sleeve pocket and into The Weasel's hand.

Good, Remo thought. He's going to make it easy.

The dining room was decorated in a Halloween motif. Halloween was only hours away. The walls were a riot of witches, ghosts, and goblins. Every table bore a carved jack-o'-lantern, in which a lit candle had been set. The jack-o'-lanterns' triangular eyes quaked angry light at them as they took seats.

"This CURE," said Manuel. "How exactly do you function in its table of organization?"

"Between the tight-ass and the pain in the ass," Remo said. "The tight-ass is Smith, my boss. Affectionately known as 'Upstairs.' The pain in the ass is my trainer. A Korean."

"I am not following thees," said The Weasel, his suppressed native accent slipping out.