Warren Murphy: Skull Duggery

He had been a Newark, New Jersey, beat cop. His dreams were limited to a sergeant's desk, a wife, and a nice suburban house with a white picket fence.

Harold W. Smith had changed that forever. It was Smith, in his capacity as director of CURE, a supersecret government organization that Remo had never heard of then and which virtually no one knew of today, who had engineered a frame so perfect that no one dreamed that Remo Williams, honest foot-slogging Remo Williams, had not killed a certain pusher in a certain alley and dropped his badge beside the body so very long ago.

Remo landed on death row so fast he thought the world had been turned upside down. And that was only the beginning. His life-his true life-began after he'd walked the last mile at Trenton State Prison and sat in an electric chair that sent a jolt through every jumping fiber in his body.

It did not kill him. He woke up later in a place called Folcroft Sanitarium with a new face and a choice so stark he wondered if he had died and gone to some sinister catch-22 hell: Join CURE as its enforcement arm or fry for real.

And although Remo Williams had gotten a second chance in life, his dreams of a wife and family and white picket fence were irretrievably lost.

It had taken most of the twenty years he'd worked for CURE to realize-or accept-it.

Twenty years of training in Sinanju, the fahrvergnugen of martial arts. Twenty years that had taught him to conquer all physical limitations, including absolute mastery of the opposite sex.

Under the tutelege of the Master of Sinanju-the last of a long line of professional assassins going back five millennia-Remo had discovered the thirty-seven steps to bringing a woman to blissful ecstasy. The same knowledge that unlocked the power to hold a car in place despite the best efforts of six sparking cylinders sent out subtle sexual signals that most woman responded to on an instinctive level. And that while Remo simply stood there trying to read rice labels.

The earliest steps could bring a woman to exquisite climax-and leave Remo listening to his bed partner's snores.

This was only another reason why, as the years went on, Remo had stopped bothering. What was in it for him?

Pulling into the driveway of the suburban house he had finally acquired after two decades of anonymously liquidating America's enemies, Remo wore an unhappy expression.

He carried the expression into the kitchen, along with the first two bags of rice, thinking he would gladly trade in part of his abilities for a measure of sexual satisfaction and get back a tiny spark of that old dead dream.

From the other room came the sound of a TV. The Master of Sinanju, enjoying his leisure.

Remo went out to the car, his hurt eyes glancing over to the Tudor-style house next door. The home of Harold W. Smith. It reminded him that this was all Smith's fault.

The thought struck him as he lifted the trunk. He shut it with a metallic slam.

Grimly Remo walked up to Smith's front door and rapped the imitation-brass lion's-head knocker against the door.

The door opened, framing a stoop-shouldered man of advanced years and rimless spectacles. Harold W. Smith looked indecisively in both directions, knuckles tightening on the door. "Remo!"

From behind him, a woman's voice asked, "Harold, who is it?"

That decided Smith. He closed the door behind him.

"Remo! What is this?" His croak was anxious.

"I just have one thing to say to you," Remo told him.

Smith adjusted his glasses. "Yes?"

"This is all your fault."

And with that, Remo turned on his heel and went back to finish carrying rice into his empty home. His supersensitive hearing picked up the frumpy voice of Mrs. Smith asking Harold who had been at her front door.

The answer infuriated Remo: "Just the paper boy, dear."

Remo finished putting the brown rice in the brown-rice cabinet, the white rice in the white-rice cabinet, and the exotic varieties in the others. There were five cabinets over the sink. Four of them were packed with rice in various containers.

With any luck, Remo thought glumy, the supply would last three weeks.

Remo left the kitchen to break the bad news to the Master of Sinanju.

"Little Father . . ." he began.

A spindly arm lifted, dropping a silken sleeve.

"Hush," a squeaky voice said. The figure of the Master of Sinanju occupied a floor space no greater than might a German shepherd.

Before a big-screen projection TV, he sat, his legs tucked under one another in the classic Asian lotus position. His kimono was like a monarch butterfly's wings replicated in silk-orange and black and iridescent.

Remo looked to the screen. He was surprised to see, not a British soap opera-Chiun's latest passion-but a documentary of some sort.

And because the Master of Sinanju was not watching a soap opera, Remo knew he could interrupt without risking a minor rebuke such as a compound leg fracture.

"Little Father, we need to talk," he said firmly.

"Remo!" the Master of Sinanju snapped. His wizened face glanced around, his clear hazel eyes annoyed. They were the only youthful aspect of the dusty lunar map of his features. "Not now!"

Remo folded his arms, his face a thundercloud of unhappiness. He thought about storming out, but he knew better than to escalate an argument he could never hope to win.

He wondered what Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju, found so interesting. As Remo watched, scratchy archival footage from another time flickered on the screen. A crisp narrator's voice was saying, "Amelia Earhart left New Guinea on her fateful voyage on July 1, 1937, and was never seen again. Many theories have been put forth since her plane was lost over the South Pacific, but the mystery has never been solved."

From the Master of Sinanju came a derisive snort and a butterfly fluttering of his exquisitely long fingernails.

The announcer's overfed face appeared on the screen, looking serious. "We at Ten-Thousand-Dollar Reward believe there is no mystery that cannot be solved," he continued. "Somewhere out there is someone who knows what befell the brave aviatrix on her flight into the unknown. The producers of this program have placed ten thousand dollars in a trust fund to be paid to the first person to provide a credible documented account of Amelia Earhart's fate. If you are that person, call the eight-hundred number on this screen. Now!"

Twin puffs of hair floating over the Master of Sinanju's tiny ears like volcanic steam quivered in anticipation.

Remo detected that tiny warning subliminally. He stepped back in time to escape the explosion of butterfly silk that was the Master of Sinanju coming to full boil.

"Quickly, Remo!" Chiun cried, whirling about. "Fetch the telephone device. We must call this number!"

Remo eyed the Master of Sinanju, his arms flung out like wings, his wispy beard barely visible under his anguished mouth.

And he did not move.

"Did you not hear me, deaf one?" Chiun squeaked. Even with his arms upraised, he looked tiny.

"I hear you fine," Remo said calmly. "Just as you heard me when I wanted to talk to you."

"But the reward!" Chiun cried, his squeaky voice twisting with imminent loss.

"You know where the phone is," Remo said casually.

"But I do not know how to work it properly!"

"Just press the buttons, like any lesser mortal," Remo offered, his hands sweeping to the telephone on a tiny table, the only bit of furniture in the bare room other than the big TV.

"Very well, I will," said the Master of Sinanju, lowering his sail-like arms. He shrank to his normal height, which was barely five-feet-five. He padded toward the telephone on white sandals. His feet made an audible sound only because the Master of Sinanju wished to make his unhappiness known to his pupil.