Warren Murphy: The Final Crusade

"That right. He don't wanna audience 'cause he afraid he'll wimp out and everybody laugh."

"That right, Jim?"

"Anybody know what happened to the old Rialto?" Remo called out.

"Closed now, man. Video."

"Too bad," Remo said. "I saw my first movie there. It was a double feature, Mr. Roberts and Gorgo. They don't make double features like that anymore."

"That right for damn sure."

"I went with an older kid, Jimmy something," Remo continued vaguely. "We sat in the first row. The orchestra pit was in front of us. I remember it was a scary black hole. I asked Jimmy what it was and he told me that was where the monsters sat. When the film started, my eyes kept switching back and forth between the screen and the pit."

"Sounds like a good reason to jump to me," someone said. And everyone laughed.

"For the last time, I'm not jumping."

"You could change your mind," peach sweatshirt said hopefully.

"If I do change my mind," Remo warned, "I'm going to make a point of landing on top of you."

Peach sweatshirt took a quick two steps backward. Everyone stepped back. They moved out onto the street. Cars had to stop for them, and when they did, drivers got out to crane their heads in the direction of peach sweatshirt's excitedly pointing finger.

The word "jumper" raced through the gathering throng.

Remo groaned. If this got on the evening news, Smith would kill him. Why did it always go like this? Why couldn't he just be left alone?

Being alone was what this night was supposed to be about. Remo reached for a loose brick near his hand. He wrenched it out of the crumbling mortar with an easy flick of his wrist. Holding the brick in one hand, he began whittling off sharp slivers with the heel of his other hand. The tiny shards shot off from the brick like angry hornets. One tore through peach sweatshirt's hood. He howled at the annoying sting. A second shard caught him in the knee. Peach sweatshirt fell to the ground clutching his leg.

With a rapid-fire series of strokes, Remo sent more brick shards flying. He made it look easy. For Remo, it was. But only years of training in the art of Sinanju made it possible. Years of training in which he first learned to become one with an inanimate object, so that if he wished the brick to come loose, he knew exactly where to take hold of it, exactly how much pressure to apply, and from what angle. A casual glance at the brick's surface told him the weak points-the places where he would get maximum disintegration with minimum force.

He chopped more shards free. The brick was disappearing in his hand. Down below, the crowd was being peppered by a dry stinging rain. The pedestrians began to retreat. A few broke into a run. Drivers scrambled for their cars and got the engines started even as brick slivers cracked their windshields.

Within a matter of seconds, the street was clear of traffic.

Remo smiled. He still had half the brick left. He replaced it in the cornice and stood up.

He wondered what Sister Mary Margaret would say if she could see him now. No, that was the wrong thought. If she could see him now, all she would see would be a young man of indeterminate age. Dark hair, brown catlike eyes, high cheekbones, and unusually thick wrists. Nothing special, at least on the surface. Remo's clothes-a white T-shirt and tan chinos-would have brought a disapproving tsk-tsk from Sister Mary Margaret.

But surface appearances are deceptive. Remo walked to the chimney. It was in the shadow of this chimney one humid summer night that he sat under the stars drinking a beer from a bottle, watching the heavens, and wondering where he would end up, now that he had been drafted into the Marines. Then the world was about to open up to him. He had no inkling of where it would all lead.

He had wondered what Sister Mary Margaret might have said on that night too. The thought made him feel guilty. But he had a right to the beer because he was of age. Still, he had felt guilty.

It had been a long time since he'd felt guilty about his actions. There were a lot of bodies in their graves because of Remo Williams and the work that he had been trained to do. Criminals, enemies of America, yes. But bodies nevertheless. Sister Mary Margaret would have been horrified. Funny he would think of Sister Mary Margaret again. Probably because Chiun wasn't around. Remo had wanted to get away from Chiun, from Smith, and from Folcroft Sanitarium, where he now lived-if occupying a cubicle in an insane asylum could be called living.

At first, it had been a welcome relief from all the years of hotel rooms and safe houses. But after a year, it had begun to grate on his nerves. It was not real living. And Smith was always around. Chiun was always around too, but then, Chiun had been around for most of Remo's adult life. Like Sister Mary Margaret during his childhood.

And so Remo had come to the brick building where he'd lived in a dingy walk-up apartment after leaving the orphanage. He moved back in after Vietnam, and left it a second time only to go to jail. Now the apartment house was deserted. The apartment itself was inhabited by rats, with drug paraphernalia in the halls and obscene graffiti everywhere.

Once, Remo had dreamed of buying the whole building. But after all these years of unsung service, America couldn't even give him a home to call his own.

Remo had started for the roof trap when he sensed movement below him. He didn't hear anything. The moving thing was too silent to make a sound. Instead, he felt the eddies of disturbed air on his bare forearms. Remo's instant alertness relaxed slightly.

"Chiun?" He said it aloud. "Little Father, is that you?"

A bald head poked up from the open trap. The parchment face of Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju, regarded Remo wisely.

"Who else moves like a breathless wind?" Chiun's squeaky voice demanded. A wise smile animated his wispy beard.

"Me. "

"No, not like a breathless wind. You move like a breaking wind."

"I'll settle for second best," Remo said amiably.

"Breaking wind is not second best, breaking wind is unpleasant. And smells bad."

"Oh." Remo frowned. "That kind of breaking wind."

"What other kind is there?"

"Never mind," Remo said. He sighed. Chiun was in a snotty mood. He could sense it. That was not so bad. When Chiun displayed his good side, it usually meant that he was trying to con something from Remo. Remo wasn't in the mood for the happy Chiun tonight, but a snotty Chiun, he could take. No Chiun at all would have been better.

"Pull up a brick," Remo suggested.

"I will stand," Chiun said, rising from the trap like a child's balloon. He settled on sandaled feet, his green kimono fluttering with motion. Chiun tucked his longnailed fingers into the garment's belling sleeves and waited. After nearly a minute of silence he cleared his throat noisily.

"Did I forget something?" Remo asked.

"You forgot to ask me how I knew that you would be here. "

"I stopped being surprised by you a long time ago."

"Very well, since you will not ask, I will answer anyway."

And Remo leaned against the chimney and folded his arms. Might as well listen.

"You have been acting strangely all week," Chiun pointed out.

"I've been thinking a lot lately," Remo returned.

"As I said, strangely. For you, to think is strange, possibly weird. This is how I noticed. Then you disappear without telling me."

"Can't I just go for a walk?"

"You took a bus."

"I got tired of walking. So what? And how did you know I took a bus? Smith's computers tell you that?"

"No, I knew you would be going. And Smith's secretary told me you did not have her call for a taxicab. You are too lazy to walk far, therefore you took the bus." Chiun smiled placidly.

"Okay, I took the bus. Big deal. But I don't believe for a moment you knew I was going to leave. It was a sudden impulse."