Warren Murphy - Death Sentence

"Remo!" he gasped.

The pair came out of the room. They walked out with their round white eyes even rounder than normal, giving them, to Chiun's eyes, comically identical expressions. The girl cowered behind Remo, as if for protection.

"You're Chiun, aren't you?" Remo asked in an uncertain voice.

"No. I am not Chiun," the Master of Sinanju snapped. Even for Remo, it was a stupid question. But to Chiun's amazement, the retort did not bring a like response. Instead, Remo descended into imbecility.

"Well," he said, "whatever your name is, I thought you were dead."

"Who told you that?" Chiun demanded.

"Nobody. I saw it in a dream."

"I have been in Sinanju. And why are you not in prison?"

"You know about that? Then you do know me?"

"Certainly I know you. You are Remo." Chiun hesitated. His slit eyes narrowed. Had it happened again? The thing he most dreaded? Had the spirit of Shiva once again supplanted Remo's true personality? But no, his face lacked the stern demonic cast. And he was babbling. Shiva, the Hindu God of Destruction, would never babble. Still, something was amiss.

"So you hear me, O Shatterer of Worlds?" he asked loudly.

Remo and the white woman looked at one another and then behind themselves. Seeing nothing, they returned their stupid gazes to the Master of Sinanju. "Who are you talking to?" Remo asked.

"I wish to speak with Shiva, the Destroyer."

"That's a Hindu god," Naomi whispered. "I think."

"Never heard of him, or it," Rerno hissed back. Chiun tensed. Certainly Remo knew of Shiva. He did not remember the last time Shiva had overtaken his personality, during the time of the Japanese occupation of Arizona. And it soon had passed. But it was the fear of another such spell that had sent Chiun back to Sinanju to seek a remedy in his scrolls.

Remo would not know that either. But he knew that Shiva dwelt within him.

"You do not know Shiva?" Chiun asked padding forward. "Yet you know that you are Remo."

"Of course I'm Remo," Remo said, shaking a cigarette from his pack.

"What are you doing?" Chiun screeched, pointing to the cigarette dangling from Remo's mouth.

"Smoking a Camel," Remo replied coolly.

"You smell like you have been smoking camels-as well as cows and other malodorous creatures. But I was referring to the tobacco thing in your mouth."

Remo struck a match and lit the cigarette. Chiun reacted. He flew at Remo and plucked the cigarette from his surprised lips. He shredded it with furious finger motions.

Remo stood there in surprise. Naomi screeched and leapt behind Remo.

"Protect me, Remo!" she yelled. "He burns his sugar faster than anything I've ever seen!"

"Emperor Smith is gravely ill," Chiun said, ignoring the woman's obviously demented babbling.

"Emperor?" Remo's voice was blank.

"I wonder if he means Harold Smith?" Naomi said suddenly, peering out from behind Remo.

"Of course I mean Harold Smith," Chiun snapped. "And what do you know of Smith?"

It was Remo who answered. "He's the judge who sent me away."

Chiun blinked. In a mock-calm voice he said, "So you remember that much."

"I've had twenty years on death row to reflect on it," Remo said tartly, his tone so disrespectful that Chiun was tempted to discipline him. But the vibrations Remo gave off, as Chiun stood close to him, were wrong. They were not Remo's vibrations, nor Shiva's. They were ... off.

"Twenty years," Chiun said. "You mean twenty days, do you not?"

"No, I mean twenty years."

"I have had the misfortune to train you for more than twenty years, and I know where you have been. And it is not in prison."

"Then it's true. The dreams."

"Tell me of these dreams," Chiun demanded.

"You and I. We were doing incredible, impossible things. And Smith was in the dreams. And a place called Folcroft."

"Those were not dreams, but a reality you have somehow lost," Chiun said sagely.

"If that's so, then why did you let me languish in prison?"

"I returned to Sinanju to attend certain matters, and while I was sojourning there, the new emperor informed me that you had returned to prison on an undercover assignment."

"Undercover!" Remo burst out. "I was almost buried there."

"What do you mean?"

"I was on death row!" Remo said hotly. "They had me scheduled for execution at seven o'clock this morning. I went over the wall."

The Master of Sinanju indicated the woman with a fingernail like an ivory spear.

"And this woman," he said slowly. "How is she part of this wild story of yours-aside from your usual reason?"

"What's my usual reason?"

Chiun's nose wrinkled in distaste. "Sex."

"I resent that insinuation," Naomi Vanderkloot said sharply. "I'll have you know that I'm a full professor."

"Although I must admit that she is more attractive than your usual cowlike consorts," Chiun added.

Remo looked at Naomi. "She is?" he said incredulously. Naomi shot him a hurt look.

Chiun asked, "You are the woman Naomi Vanderfloot?"

"Kloot. Vanderkloot. It's Dutch."

"I do not differentiate between peas," Chiun sniffed, "although some are less green than others. It is the same with Europeans. You have forbidden knowledge of Folcroft, which you are spreading in newspapers. How did you come into possession of this knowledge? Speak truthfully, for your life depends upon this."

"He told me," Naomi said, indicating Remo.

"Yeah, I told her," Remo said. "What is Folcroft anyway? I keep dreaming of it. And you."

"Do you remember Sinanju, Remo?"

"No. What is it?

"A gift," Chiun said sadly. "Of which you are seldom worthy." And the Master of Sinanju began to turn in place, his saffron kimono skirts belled up and out like a parachute. He caught flashing glimpses of Remo simply standing there like any common white oaf, the woman cowering behind him.

And Chiun struck.

Remo's hands shot up instinctively as he dropped into a defensive crouch. One of Chiun's sandaled feet snapped out, and although the blow was restrained, it sent Remo spinning. At the last possible moment, Remo had parried the blow with one wrist.

Chiun alighted and pushed his skirts down as Remo, his face shocked white, slowly gained his feet. He bowed.

"Your mind may not remember Sinanju," he said solemnly, "but your body does. And for that I give thanks to my ancestors."

"Know anything about what he's saying?" Remo asked Naomi, not taking his eyes off the Master of Sinanju.

"Asians are culturally fixated on ancestor worship," Naomi said quietly. "But the rest of it must be some belief system. That's cultural anthropology. I don't do cultural anthropology any more." Raising her voice, she asked, "What do you want here?"

"I have been sent to kill you."

"Over my dead body," Remo snapped, returning to his crouch as Naomi slipped behind him. She grabbed the back of his T-shirt in nervous fistfuls, and Chiun noticed for the first time that it was neither stark white nor jet black, but a pleasing saffron. He wondered if this Remo might not be an improvement over the old.

"Your body is already dead," Chiun said. "For you are the dead night tiger of Sinanju legend, the avatar of Shiva. I could, if you wish, show you the grave where your government buried you."

"I knew it!" Naomi snapped. "It's a government plot. It's-" Her face went white. Her mouth made shapes but no sounds.

"Spit it out," Remo prompted. "What are you trying to say?"

"A clone!" Naomi shrilled. "The real Remo is dead, and you're a genetic clone of him created by the CIA. Not an evolutionary mutant. You're probably filled with yucky artificial ingredients. Oh, my God, I slept with a clone. What will my mother think!"

Remo looked toward Chiun. "Any idea what a clone is?"

"No, but it does not matter. Listen to me, Remo. Do you wish to know the truth about yourself?"