Warren Murphy - Line of Succession

"I'm ready for him."

"Sit tight. Chiun is on the way to join you."

"Tell him to knock three times on the trunk of the Vice-President's limo. "

***

The Dutchman limped for several blocks, searching. He was in a run-down business district in East Los Angeles. Somewhere there would be a hardware store. When he found one, he broke in through the back. Every hardware store had a vise. There was a big one in the back room, bolted to a workbench. He flopped his right forearm into the vise and closed it painfully with his other elbow. Setting himself, he yanked. The right shoulder strained, bringing sweat to his brow. The ball joint popped back into the socket. The pain was incredible. But he could use the arm now. That made resetting everything else that much easier....

Herm Accord waited in the bar for nearly an hour. He was about to leave when the man walked in, briefcase in hand.

He was a youthful guy with a dissipated face. His hair was like cornsilk, and cut in a punk style that made it look like the blond locks had been sheared by the ruthless swipe of a sickle.

"You Dutch?" he asked.

"Yes," said the blond man, limping to the table. He waved the waitress off.

"What's the job?"

"Tomorrow night the two presidential candidates are going to debate on national television."

"Yeah, so what?"

"I want it to go down in history as the unfinished debate. "

"Like the unfinished symphony, huh? It's doable. But it's a little late to do anything with explosives. That's my specialty. "

"Your specialty is death. You are ex-CIA. A renegade. And you have a reputation for doing the impossible. I don't care how you do it. Here," Dutch said, lifting the briefcase to the table with tired hands. "There's one million and fifty thousand dollars."

"I said a million over the phone. What's the extra fifty grand for?"

"You own a private plane. I need you to fly me someplace. "

"Where?"

"Home," said the Dutchman.

***

Remo paced the roof of the Holiday Inn. Two floors below, the Vice-President worked on last-minute preparations for the great debate. There had been no sign of the Dutchman all night, and now morning was brightening the sky. The Master of Sinanju came up through a fire door. "Anything?" Remo asked anxiously.

"No," said Chiun. "There are no suspicious persons in the lobby. Here, I brought you a newspaper. Perhaps if you focus your limited attention upon it, you will cease your incessant pacing."

"At a time like this?" asked Remo, taking the paper without thinking.

"We may be in for a long wait."

"What makes you say that?"

"The Dutchman has a long journey to this city. It will not help him that he now limps."

"The four blows."

"Three, actually," corrected Chiun, looking over the edge of the roof to the front entrance below. Remo noticed that Chiun seemed less alert than he should have.

"I guess you figured if the Dutchman was crippled, I'll have a better shot at taking him alive," Remo suggested.

"That possibility might have crossed my mind," Chiun admitted in a distant voice. "But my duty was to protect the governor. I could not kill Purcell, so I did the next best thing. "

"I still want him."

"I will let you know the moment he sets foot in this building," said Chiun.

And because he was bored, Remo flipped through the newspaper. On page four, a boxed item caught his eye. Remo tore it out and called to Chiun.

"Forget the entrance," said Remo. "The Dutchman isn't anywhere near here."

Chiun asked, "How did you know that?" Then he caught himself. "I mean, how can you say that, Remo?"

Grimly Remo gave the article to Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju looked at the headline: "PTERODACTYLS SIGHTED OVER SAINT MARTIN."

"They've been circling a certain ruined castle since last night," Remo said. "When people try to photograph them, the developed pictures show only empty air. I don't suppose you'd have any idea what castle that might be?"

"You tell me," said Chiun unhappily. "You are the deductive genius."

"The castle on Devil's Mountain where we first encountered Purcell," Remo said. "His home. And the place where he's gone to hide and heal. The place where you figured he'd go all along. Am I right?"

"A lucky guess," said Chiun, turning the clipping into confetti with fussy motions of his fingernails.

"I'm going to Saint Martin."

"That does not worry me. What worries me is: will you return from Saint Martin?"

Chapter 35

When the plane banked over Saint Martin, Remo could see Devil's Mountain, a black horn of evil thrusting up from one end of the beautiful French-Dutch island in the Caribbean.

"There it is," Remo said, pointing to a tumble of white stones high on a ledge overlooking the bay.

"I see no purple terrorbirds," sniffed Chiun. He was thinking how much Devil's Mountain reminded him of Mount Paektusan.

But they saw the pterodactyls when the taxi driver brought them as far as he dared to go. The rumor on the island was that the former inhabitant of Devil's Mountain, the feared Dutchman, had returned from the dead to haunt his ruined castle.

Remo paid the driver and they started walking.

The pterodactyls arose from the ruins and made lazy circle over the ledge. They ignored Remo and Chiun, who had begun to scale the sheer side of the volcanic mountain.

"Remember," warned Remo. "You had a shot at him. Now it's my turn."

As they climbed, the music seeped into their consciousness, the subliminal sounds of the Dutchman's disordered mind. The sky turned purple, a deeper purple than the pterodactyls. As if envious of the richer hue, the pterodactyls lifted silent wings and flew into the heavens. They were absorbed by the lowering purple sky.

"I think he's playing," said Remo. "Good. That means he doesn't know we are here."

"He does not know anything," said Chiun worriedly. "Look! "

A gargantuan face broke over the lip of the ledge, like a whale surfacing. It leered, huge and cruel with slitted hazel cat's eyes and a pocked yellow complexion.

"Nuihc," Remo whispered.

"Listen," Chiun said.

"Father! Father!" The voice was thin and sad, but the vocal violence of the cry carried alarmingly.

"It's Purcell. What's he doing?" Remo wanted to know.

Chiun grasped Remo's wrist with clawlike hands. "Listen to me, my son. I think we should go from this place. "

"No way. The Dutchman is up there. I haven't come this far just so you could talk me out of this."

"He has gone over the edge."

"He did that a long time ago," Remo said, shrugging off Chiun's grasp. Chiun's hands reasserted themselves. "Over the edge into madness. Observe. Listen to the music. "

The face of Nuihc, smiling with silent cruelty, lifted like a hot-air balloon. Hanging beneath it from cables, like a wicker basket, was a tiny human-size body. The Nuihc balloon floated into the purple sky. It popped and was gone.

"Looks to me like he's just playing mind games," Remo said.

"Mark the sky. It is purple, the color of the mad mind."

"Fine. It'll make him easier to handle."

"He has nothing to lose now," Chiun warned.

"You can stay down here if you want to, Chiun. Either way, you stay out of it."

Chiun let go of Remo's arms. "Very well. This is your decision. But I will not wait below. I have already stood at the base of Mount Paektusan. This time I will accompany my son to the summit."

"Fair enough," said Remo, starting up again.

The higher they climbed, the steeper the mountain became. The air was warm, not cooled at all by the freshening sea breeze. Beyond them, the water stretched blue-green toward infinity. But above, the sky hung suffocatingly close, like a velvet hanging.

Remo was the first to reach the ledge. The castle ruins covered it. Once sparkling battlements had lifted to the sky. Now only one turret stood. The rest had fallen into great broken blocks like a city lost for thousands of years.