Warren Murphy: Return Engagement

"And you wouldn't have been foolish enough to believe you could take him if your lust to return to Sinanju had not clouded your thinking. How many times have I told you, never assume that just because familiar things fall before your skill, that it will be so with unfamiliar things. Your arrogance could have gotten you killed. And then where would my village be?"

"In Korea, where it's always been," said Remo. "And where I wish I was right now."

"You would abandon me in America, Remo? Alone, the only perfect person in a land of fat racists."

"No, Little Father, I would take you back to Sinanju. With rne. Where we both belong."

Chiun's parchment visage softened. He turned away so that his pupil could not see his face.

"We will discuss it later," he said. "After we recover the nebulizer and ensure my continued employment."

"Fine. Let's go."

"What about these vermin?" said Chiun, waving a hand at the cowering members of the White Aryan League of America and Alabama. "Should we not dispose of them? Perhaps Emperor Smith would appreciate a few heads to set upon the gates of Fortress Folcroft. Heads are wonderful for warding off enemies. I see some good ones here."

"We don't have time."

The Master of Sinanju shrugged, and followed Remo out the door.

"What about me?" asked Dr. Beflecken, clutching his useless dangling arm.

"Oh, right." said Remo, stepping back into the room. "You rebuilt Bloodsucker, didn't you?"

"Blutsturz. Yes."

"And you could do it again? With someone else?"

"I am very skilled."

"Good-bye," said Remo, driving two fingers into the man's eyes. Dr. Manfred Beflecken collapsed into a pile of dead flesh.

"You were right, Little Father," said Remo. "It's a handy stroke."

"Remind me to kill you later," Chiun said to the surviving members of the White Aryan League in parting. Moe Stooge had used it often in similar circumstances, and the Master of Sinanju was certain that the great entertainer would not mind his using it.

Dr. Harold Smith removed the special briefcase from his office locker. He opened it and checked the minicomputer and telephone hookup that would link him to the CURE computers during his planned trip to North Carolina.

Before he closed the briefcase, he slipped his old automatic into a special recess that would enable him to get it past airport security.

On his way out of the office, he spoke to his secretary. "I will be away for at least a day, Mrs. Mikulka," Smith told her. "I'm sure you'll be able to handle matters until my return."

"Of course, Dr. Smith." said Eileen Mikulka, who prided herself on the fact that she could easily run Folcroft's day-to-day operations while her boss was out of town.

"I will be in touch."

"Oh, Dr. Smith?" Smith turned.

"Yes?"

"They're admitting that new patient now. The one who survived a botched surgical procedure. I thought you might like to welcome him, as usual."

"Thank you for telling me," said Dr. Smith. "What is his name?"

Mrs. Mikulka consulted a desk log. "A Mr. Conrad."

"Fine, I will do that."

Smith took the elevator to the main lobby, where he saw the new patient being wheeled through the big glass doors by two burly attendants. A young blond girl in a white nurse's uniform hovered over the man on the gurney, concern pricking her soft features.

Smith strode toward them.

"Hi! I'm Ilsa," the blond nurse said. She had the chipper personality of a health-care worker fresh to the field.

"Welcome to Folcroft Sanitarium," Smith said, briefly shaking her hand. "I'm chief administrator of this facility."

"Oh! Dr. Smith."

"That's right."

"I've heard of you," Ilsa said brightly. "Allow me to present Mr. Conrad."

The man on the gurney stared up with glazed black eyes, his face as dry and bloodless as if it were carved from shell. The dry lips were drawn back over brownish gums in a deathlike rictus.

Smith offered a tentative hand, but quickly shoved it into a pocket when he realized the man had no legs. The covering sheet lay flat where the man's legs should have been. Smith couldn't be certain the man wasn't also missing his arms. Better not to find out the uncomfortable way.

Ilsa bent over the patient. "This is Dr. Smith. I told you about him. Dr. Harold Smith."

Suddenly the black eyes brightened with life. "Smith," he hissed.

Dr. Smith recoiled at the violence with which the dry husk of a man spoke his name. The old head trembled, lifting off the pillow. One arm, strong, muscular, but horribly scarred, flailed out from under the sheet. The patient's gnarled hand clawed the air. It seemed to claw at him.

"Calm down," soothed Ilsa. "It's all right. I'm here."

"Smith," the man hissed again. "Smith!"

"He sometimes gets this way," Ilsa told Smith as she gently forced Konrad Blytsturz' agitated head back onto the fluffy pillow.

"Er, yes," said Dr. Smith. "Let me assure you he'll get the best of care at Folcroft."

Dr. Harold Smith hurriedly escaped out the door, even as the poor patient kept repeating his name over and over again. Smith shuddered, even though he had seen worse cases come through the Folcroft gates. Patients like Mr. Conrad were often bitterly mad at the world. Even so, the utter venom that seemed to coat the way he spoke Smith's name was disturbing. It was almost las if the man knew him. And hated him.

But that, of course, was impossible, thought Harold W. Smith. He had never seen Mr. Conrad before. Smith drove off the Folcroft grounds wondering what terrible tragedy had reduced the man to his present pitiful state.

Mrs. Harold W. Smith stood before the floor-length mirror in the bedroom of her modest Tudor-style home, examining herself critically.

"Frumpy," she decided aloud.

The other two dresses made her look the same. She had just purchased them, and while they had seemed to flatter her full figure in the store dressing-room mirrors with the perky salesgirl insisting they all made her look "fashionable," in the privacy of her home she saw herself as she had always been-a frump.

There was no help for it. Even as a teenager, she had possessed only a certain dowdy charm. Harold had married her anyway. And as the years passed by, blurring the modeling of her face, etching motherly wrinkles about her eyes, and filling out a body that, even at twenty-five, belonged to a middle-aged woman, Harold Smith had continued to love her.

True, Harold had peculiar attitudes about matrimonial love. He had never surprised her with perfume or flowers or new clothes, even in the early years of their life together-because he considered any purchase that didn't come with a five-year, fully refundable guarantee frivolous. The most romantic gift Harold Smith had ever given her was in 1974, when he had purchased a riding lawn mower for her use. The neighborhood boy had raised his rates ten cents an hour and, because Harold's hours were impossible and there was no other boy to do the work, Harold Smith had splurged on the tractor mower because he didn't want her to tire herself with the chore.

Mrs. Smith had accepted it all, down through the years. She told herself that when the time came for Harold to retire, she would finally have him all to herself. But age sixty-five came and went for Harold W. Smith, and there was no talk of retiring from Folcroft. "I'm too important," he had said the one time she had broached the subject. The years had worn down his slight frame, and she had been worried about him. "Folcroft couldn't get along without me."

It was after that brief conversation that Mrs. Smith had begun to suspect that her husband did not run a health sanitarium. Not really. Certainly he ran it, but even more certainly his job at Folcroft was a blind for something less mundane. Harold's intelligence background suggested it. That and the fact that he seemed to age faster after his early retirement from the CIA than before it.