Warren Murphy: Return Engagement

"Oh, they go back years. To the war. Here, I'll take you to him. Just let me drop this off on Dr. Smith's desk."

"A bottle of baby oil?" asked Mrs, Smith.

"For his skin."

"Oh," said Mrs. Smith, who thought it very odd that this young girl would leave such a thing on her husband's desk. But she was such a cheerful little thing that Mrs. Smith was more than happy to accompany her.

Dr. Smith returned to his office, his face even more bitter than usual.

"Good morning, Dr. Smith," said Mrs. Mikulka. "How was your trip?"

"Unsatisfactory," said Smith, tight-lipped. He had taken a chance, flying to Mount Olive, the scene of the last Harold Smith killing. Using forged identification that credited him as an FBI agent, Smith had made the rounds of the Mount Olive police and the friends, relatives, and neighbors of the late Harold Q. Smith.

He had turned up exactly nothing, no clues to the person or persons who had decapitated Smith's fellow name carrier.

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Mrs. Mikulka, as Dr. Smith stamped into his office. "Did Mrs. Smith reach you?"

Smith paused. "Reach me?"

"Yes, she was here yesterday. I'm afraid I couldn't tell her where to reach you. She was very worried. Funny thing, I left her in the office while I grabbed lunch and when I came back she was gone."

"Gone." The word croaked from Smith's throat. Suddenly he remembered calling home from the airport and receiving no answer. It didn't mean anything at the time, but now...

"Please get my wife on the phone," Smith said.

At his own desk, Dr, Smith pressed the button that raised the concealed CURE computer terminal. He keyed in a report request on the FBI agent he had secretly detailed to watch over his house.

The report came back. Subject reported taking a taxi at 11:22 the previous day. No record of return. No other unusual activity.

Smith tripped the intercom.

"No answer, Dr. Smith," said Mrs. Mikulka. "Shall I keep trying?"

"No," said Dr. Smith. "Please have the head of security sweep the grounds for any sign of my wife."

"Sir?"

"Do it!"

The head of security reported directly to Dr. Smith an hour later. A search of the grounds had been instituted. The only untoward item was the sudden disappearance of a patient, a Mr. Conrad.

"Conrad," said Smith, dismissing the man. That was the multiple amputee patient. There was no connection there.

The CURE line rang. It was Remo.

"Smitty," Remo said. "I think we have a lead on the nebulizer. We're going to follow it up."

When there was no answer, Remo said, "Smitty?"

"My wife has been kidnapped," Smith blurted out.

"Sit tight. Chiun and I are on our way."

"No," said Smith. "You stay on the nebulizer. That's your first priority."

"Don't go cold-blooded on me, Smitty. We can help. This is your wife we're talking about. The Smith killer?"

"I think so. It's hard to tell. I don't know,"

"You sound pretty rattled. Are you sure you don't want our help? Chiun and I may be going on a wildgoose chase anyway."

"This may be a personal matter," said Harold Smith, regaining control of his voice. "And I will handle it. Personally."

"Suit yourself," said Remo, hanging up.

Smith stared out the picture window, unseeing. If anything had happened to his wife . . .

Mrs. Mikulka buzzed. "Call on line one, Dr. Smith." Dr. Smith picked it up without thinking, toying with a bottle of babv oil on his desk. What was baby oil doing here? Had his wile left it?

"Dr. Smith?" a voice asked. A very old voice. "I have your wife."

Smith knocked over the bottle. "Who is this?"

"I have been searching for you a long time, Harold W. Smith. Since June 7, 1949. Do you remember June 7, 1949?"

"I do not," said Smith. "Where is my wife?"

"Where you will not find her. Without my help." Smith said nothing.

"It was in Tokyo," said the cracking voice. "Do you remember Tokyo?"

Smith's brow furrowed. "No, I don't think-"

"No!" the voice hissed. "No! I have lived in hell since that terrible day and you do not remember!" In a calmer voice he went on, "Do you remember yesterday? In the lobby of your place of work? Do you remember a man so crippled you dared not shake his hand?"

"Conrad," said Smith. Suddenly it made sense. The Smith killer had been smuggled in as a patient.

"No. Konrad Blutsturz."

"Blut-!" It all came rushing back to Harold Smith. The mission to Tokyo, the chase through the Dai-lchi Building, and in a kaleidoscope of boiling fire, that last image of Konrad Blutsturz' blackening form slipping to the ground covered in flames.

"Ahhh," said Konrad Blutsturz. "You remember now. Good. Now listen carefully, I want you to go to the town of Flamingo in Florida. There you will rent one of those flatboats they use in the Everglades. You know the kind of which I speak, with the big fan in back? In the Everglades nearby you will find a nice cozy cabin. I will be waiting there for you. Come alone. Perhaps I will let you say good-bye to your wife before I wrench the life from you."

The line clicked dead.

On the flight to Miami, Harold W. Smith allowed himself to doze off. He knew he would need all his strength for the confrontation that lay before him.

As he dozed, he dreamed.

He dreamed he was back in occupied Japan, a young agent in the waning days of the OSS, standing in the just rebuilt Tokyo Station. The train, when it wheezed into the station, was a wreck of broken windows and rust scabs. Smith got on the one new car which bore a sign reading "Reserved for Occupation Forces" in English and Japanese.

The train rattled past firebombed pockets of ruin that had been the prosperous Asakusa district. An American MI sat across from him, reading a copy of Stars and Stripes. Smith kept to himself.

Smith got off at Ueno Park, walked past what had been called Imperial Tokyo University, and found the little rice-paper-and-wood home his briefing had described right down to the reedy gate and untended shrubbery.

Smith did not loiter, because loitering would attract attention to himself. He walked right to the sliding front door, shoved it open, and tossed in a tear-gas grenade.

He waited for the gas to clear and then barged in, his automatic held steadily before him.

The house was empty. At first Smith thought he might have made a mistake. Then he noticed there was no family scroll in the traditional parlor alcove. No Japanese lived in this house.

There was a small explosives factory in the bedroom. Smith recognized the materials because during the war he had worked with the Norwegian underground. Explosives were his specialty.

Smith found a street map of downtown Tokyo, with several different routes marked on it in red ink. The routes led to a building that Smith, with a shock, recognized as the Dai-Ichi Building-the headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur and the occupation government.

Smith hurried out to the street and flagged down a bashca, one of the taxis that, during the hard war years, had been converted to burn wood instead of gasoline.

As he hectored the driver into going faster, he wondered if even Konrad Blutsturz was stubborn enough to attempt to blow up the American occupation headquarters four vears after the war had been lost.

Smith knew little about Blutsturz. His superiors had told him he was the head of a secret Nazi cell placed in the U.S. before the war. The cell had been intended as a reserve force that would take control over the United States government if Germany conquered Europe and headed for American shores.

Biutsturz had fled the U. S. and kept one step ahead of the FBI. His trail had been lost until informants had tipped the occupation that a German had made contact with Japanese militant holdouts in Tokyo itself and was planning to foment public sentiment against what so far had been a peaceful occupation.