Warren Murphy: Return Engagement

It should have been a relief. It was not.

It injected a maddening note of randomness to what Harold Smith had, with his rational mind, perceived as a logical system. If the killer was deviating into another pattern, Smith, in the long run, remained the probable target.

The agony of waiting could be prolonged indefinitely. Smith groaned inwardly, and settling himself, prepared to attack this new factor with all his rational skill.

Harold Q. Smith had heard a knock at his front door.

He was watching a football game, in which his team was leading by three points in the fourth quarter. He was not happy at being interrupted, and so went to the door grumbling.

The girl standing on the porch was young and very pretty. Smith had never seen her before, and because Mount Olive was a college town, he automatically assumed she was a student. Maybe she was here to sell him a magazine. Sometimes the students did that for spending money.

The girl smiled sweetly. and Smith's bad mood went away. She had that kind of smile.

"Hi! Are you Harold Q. Smith?"

"That's right, young lady."

"I have a friend of yours in my van."

"Friend?"

"Yes, he'd like to speak with you."

"Well," said Harold Q. Smith slowly, thinking of his football game, "tell him to come in."

"Oh, he can't," Ilsa said sadly. "He can't walk, poor thing."

"Oh," said Harold Q. Smith. "I suppose I have to go to him."

"Would you?"

Smith would, and did.

The blood girl hauled open the side door. Harold Q. Smith stuck his head in before stepping up into the van and saw the most hideous face he had ever seen. Ever.

The face belonged to a body covered to the neck in blankets. An old man. Very old, with tiny ears and bright black eyes. His body didn't seem to make a normal outline under the rough cloth.

"Smith!" the man hissed.

"Do I know you?"

Then Smith felt the gun in his back. He did not have to turn around to know it was a gun. In fact, he didn't think it would be a good idea to turn around at all.

"Inside," the blond girl said, her voice no longer sounding of honey and sunshine.

Smith stepped up. He had to bend over to stand in the cramped interior. It was okay, though, because it made the fall when the girl clubbed him over the head that much shorter.

"I have waited for this moment, Harold Q. Smith," Konrad Blutsturz intoned. "Forty years, I have waited."

"I think he's out."

"Eh?"

"He can't hear you," said Ilsa. "I guess I knocked him out. Sorry."

"Bah!" spat Konrad Blutsturz. "It does not matter. He is not the right Smith and I am too weary to kill him. Drag him back to his porch and shoot him there."

"Can I cut his head off instead?" Ilsa asked, eyeing the curved blade from Blutsturz' blue left arm.

"They gush when their heads are cut off," Blutsturz warned.

"I'll stand clear." Ilsa promised.

"Please yourself," he said, closing his eyes. "Just as long as he is dead."

"Oh, goody," said Ilsa, grabbing Harold Q. Smith by the heels.

Ilsa Gans replaced the pay phone in the gas station that, even in winter, smelled of a mix of sweet magnolia blossoms and gas fumes.

She scooped up the pile of dimes she had used to make her calls. She had started out with forty dollars in change. Now there was only sixty cents. But she had found what she wanted. She couldn't wait to tell her Fuhrer.

She trotted back to the waiting van and climbed behind the wheel.

"I found the perfect place," she called back.

In the dim rear of the van, lying on a fold-down cot, lay Konrad Blutsturz.

"Where?" he croaked.

"Folcroft Sanitarium. It's in New York. It took me a zillion calls to find a place, but this one is perfect. The admitting person assured me it's one of the best in the country. They'll accept you right away, and best of all, they'll let me stay with you as your personal nurse. Some of the others would have taken you, but not me. I knew you didn't want us separated."

"Good, Ilsa," groaned Konrad Blutsturz. His stumps ached, they ached to the bone. With his real hand he pulled the blankets tighter. They were coarse. Army blankets. They itched, and somehow the itch was more maddening than the pain.

"And you'll never guess what," Ilsa went on in the cheery voice she used when his spirits were low. "The man in charge of Folcroft, his name is Smith. Harold Smith. Isn't that wild?"

"Smith," said Konrad Blutsturz. And his eyes blazed.

Chapter 27

Remo Williams left the headquarters office of the White Aryan League of America and Alabama and rejoined Chiun in the adjoining conference room.

"What did Emperor Smith say?" the Master of Sinanju asked. Chiun stood before the assembled survivors of the White Aryan League, who squatted on the floor, their hands clasped behind their heads like POW's in a war movie.

"He's not happy, but if we bring back the nebulizer right away. I don't think he'll fire you."

Chiun's facial hair trembled.

"Fire?" he quavered. "Smith said I might be fired? No Master of Sinanju has ever been fired. Never."

"He didn't say fire, exactly," Remo admitted, "but he's very upset."

"Then we will recover this device," said Chiun firmly.

"How?"

Chiun yanked one of the seated men to his feet. The man came up like a springing jack-in-the-box.

"This one will tell us," Chiun said.

Remo looked at the man. He was frightened, but there was a streak of surly arrogance in his meaty, middle-aged face. His thick eyebrows and brush mustache were the same whisk-broom color.

"What's your name, buddy?" Remo demanded.

The man squared his shoulders. "Dr. Manfred Beflecken."

"You say that like it means something."

"It does. I am one of the finest surgeons in the world."

"He is the one who created that vile thing," said Chiun.

"Did you?"

"I had that privilege. Bionics are my specialty."

"You created a monster," Remo said.

"No," said Dr. Manfred Beflecken. "Konrad Blutsturz was already a monster. The war made him so. I made him a better monster."

"Insane," said Chiun. "This physician is insane. And he is a racist, possibly the worst one of all. I tried your word game on him, Remo. He hates everyone. Even these other racists. He thinks Germans are the master race. Germans! The only thing Germans were ever good for was soldiering-and when was the last time they won a war?"

"These others are nothing," said Dr. Beflecken. "Mere tools to achieve Herr Fuhrer's ends."

"The only end I care about is ending that thing's life," Remo said grimly. "Where can I find him?"

The doctor shrugged. "Who can say?"

"You can, and you will," said Remo, grabbing the man by the shoulder. Remo dug his thumb into Dr. Beflecken's beefy shoulder muscles until he felt the hard ball of the man's shoulder joint. Dr. Beflecken's face flushed. He struggled, but Remo's hand squeezed the fight out of him.

"What you did to Blutsturz I can undo. To him. To you. To anyone," Remo warned. "Last chance."

"I am a loyal German of the Reich," said Dr. Beflecken.

Remo pressed. The man's shoulder separated with an audible pop.

Tears squeezed from Dr. Beflecken's eyes. His right arm dropped lower than his left by a noticeable inch. Remo switched shoulders.

"There is a cabin," Dr. Beflecken gasped as he felt Remo's thumb seek his other shoulder joint. His knees felt like tires leaking air. "In the Florida Everglades. Near a place called Flamingo. Herr Fuhrer lived there before coming to Fortress Purity. He may go there."

"Hear that, Little Father?"

"No," said the Master of Sinanju. "I hear only the voice of my ancestors, accusing me of becoming the first Master of Sinanju to be laid off like a common ditchdigger. "

"This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't stopped me. I could have taken Bloodsucker or whatever his name is."