Warren Murphy - The Ultimate Death

There was a scent under that of the lilacs.

Chiun's nose wrinkled as he smelled it.

He stepped up from the path to the raised mound from which the lilacs grew, then passed through them, coming upon the tree trunk from the north side.

He saw the soft mound of overturned earth first. Not quite as large around as a manhole cover. It was positioned between two claws of gigantic black root. It had been there nearly a month, by Chiun's calculations.

A wide crevice spread twenty feet up the rotted trunk of the tree. The Master of Sinanju knew what he would find even before he looked up. When he did lift his eyes, a ghastly vision stared back at him.

Several feet up the trunk, nestled in the moist and crumbling fissure, the skeleton of Gregory Green Gideon peered down at him. The bones were bleached white, and the lipless mouth smiled all thirty-two teeth at him in a clean, shining skull.

The gyonshi burial method. This was the ceremonial manner in which they disposed of their victims.

The gyonshi were here. All around him.

With a coldness settling deep in the pit of his stomach, the Master of Sinanju realized he had delivered not only himself, but Remo, into their clutches.

Mary Melissa Mercy had removed her right-hand glove. She was drawing the nail of her index finger along Remo Williams' back. Not the sharpened edge, but the outside of the cuticle. She had done this several times, so that he would be used to the caress of the nail. So that he would not anticipate her attack.

Then quickly and carefully, there would be a single jab. As the Leader had commanded. He would be vulnerable to it by then. For she had been cautioned that the gweilo of the Sinanju master had many tricks in his repertoire.

It would be easy. Separate and conquer. First, the gweilo. Then the hated Master of Sinanju.

She was just about to do the deed when the ceiling-to-floor window collapsed in a pile of glittering shards.

It splintered from top to bottom with a massive cracking sound, and the pieces fell in an impossibly delicate sheet, like a waterfall, settling in perfect slopes on either side of the frame.

Through the barely scattered debris whirled the Master of Sinanju.

Recoiling, Mary Melissa Mercy pushed her fiery mane off her forehead and buried her fingernails out of sight in its follicle fire.

"Remo, we will leave," Chiun said imperiously.

"I'm kind of in the middle of something here, Chiun," Remo said pointedly.

Chiun dug his fingers into a cluster of nerves at the base of Remo's spine, and Remo suddenly had about as much interest in Mary Melissa Mercy as in reading the financial page of The Wall Street Journal.

Remo's face became twisted in anger and confusion. "What's going on, Chiun?" he demanded. "Besides sandbagging my social life?"

"You are welcome," said Chiun, but his cold eyes were trained on Mary Melissa Mercy, who sat open-legged and red-lipped atop her desk, her eyes unreadable behind iridescent green sunglasses. Without a word, she slipped from the room.

Remo wheeled on the Master of Sinanju.

"How the ding-Bong hell did you find me in here, anyway?" he growled.

The Master of Sinanju shrugged frail shoulders. "It was not difficult. I merely followed the flies," Chiun stepped toward the door, threw it open, and said, "It is time to go."

"Since when?"

"The poisoners are not here," Chiun admitted.

"Oh, big surprise," said Remo. "When did that come in over the wire service?"

"We shall seek them elsewhere," said Chiun, flouncing through the open door. "Come."

"Not in this lifetime," Remo grumbled, following dutifully.

Chapter 13

Favio "Buster Thumbs" Briassoli expected trouble. He had been expecting trouble ever since he'd returned to Little Italy and the service of Don Pietro Scubisci.

Favio hated to admit it, but the Scubisci family was not what it once was. There was blood in the water. And blood always brought out the sharks.

Of course, he would never dare to express his fears aloud. Not even to his longtime friend Gaetano "Johnny Chisels" Chisli.

"You think Don Pietro maybe left some of his marbles back at the hospital, Favio?" Gaetano had asked recently.

"I think you bedda shud your fuckin' mouth, Johnny, that's what I think," Favio Briassoli had responded. But the truth was, the Don Pietro he was working for wasn't the Don Pietro of the old days. Not even close.

When everything had seemed to be going to hell a few years back, and he and the rest of the Scubisci syndicate had gone to the mattresses against the Pubescio family of California, Favio Briassoli, like any well-trained Mafia soldier, had fought right alongside his fellow soldiers.

But when Don Pietro had lapsed into a coma after eating a tainted piece of fish, and Don Fiavorante Pubescio of California had taken over the Scubusci family, Favio Briassoli, like any small-time hood who broke kneecaps for a buck, understood it was time to lam out to someplace safe until things cooled off.

They didn't cool off until Don Fiavorante cooled off, as in "whacked out." And in his stead returned the man the best doctors at Mount Sinai had declared was trapped in a "persistent vegetative state."

Favio wasn't sure how it had happened. Don Pietro, once he had mustered his old crew, declined to go into details. But of one immutable truth, he was sure.

Don Pietro Scubisci was in charge again.

But like a deep wound that refused to heal, Don Pietro's mind was not what it once had been. His years of poisoned sleep had caused damage the eye could not see.

The business with a low-life from Boston named Tony "No Numbers" Tollini had been the first evidence of this Favio Briassoli had seen with his own eyes. Favio Briassoli still shuddered at the gruesome memory.

He had been the trigger man. He had splattered the brains of No Numbers Tollini all over the walls of Don Pietro's place of honor at the back of the Neighborhood Improvement Association building. Afterwards, the don had taken one of the greasy fried peppers from the stained paper bag he always carried with him, dipped the pepper in No Numbers' brains, and brought the soft, cheesy matter to his dry, brittle lips with relish.

"It was like he was trying a freaking cake at a freaking tea party," Johnny Chisels said, once they had exited into the fresh air of Mott Street.

"Shut the fuck up, Johnny," Favio Briassoli had replied. He was busy expelling his lunch of linguini and clam sauce into the gutter in front of the Neighborhood Improvement Association building.

There were other occasions that prompted street talk-such as a recent interest in the ways of the encroaching Chinese-but he was Don Pietro, so these lapses in decorum were ignored.

As a reward for their loyalty, Don Pietro had entrusted Favio and Gaetano with the job of protecting his frail old life. And that's where they had been for the past few weeks. Inside the Neighborhood Improvement Association, perched on hard straight-backed chairs on either side of the front door, steeled for the trouble that was now unavoidable because too many mouths were whispering that Don Pietro was a weak old man with no more of a mind than a squash.

This night it was warm enough that they could have sat outside, but on the sidewalk they would have been targets for drive-by shooters and Feds with cameras. And besides, no one came to the Neighborhood Improvement Association who didn't have business there, and no one came to the plain wood-facade, steel-reinforced door without quaking in terror at what the tiny old shell of a man and his army of thugs could do if he were displeased.

On this night, Johnny Chisels was on edge. As he leaned back in the wooden chair, he kept bouncing it back and forth off the wall behind him.

He stopped bouncing long enough to ask, "You think there's somethin' really wrong with him this time?"