Warren Murphy: The Eleventh Hour

"Chiun can't simply die. It doesn't work that way with him. It can't."

"The finest medical equipment does not lie. We can't explain it. He's obviously healthy, yet he's clearly dying. He is very old. It does happen to some people this way. But usually they go quick. In Mr. Chiun's case, it's as if his soul, his magnificent soul, is outgrowing his frail old body."

"Well put," said Chiun from his bed.

"Thank you," Dr. Gale said sweetly. She turned back to Remo. "As you can see, he's fully aware of his condition. He doesn't seem disturbed at all. I think he knows that his time has come, and he's just awaiting the end. Personally, I think it's a beautiful way to go. I hope I'm this lucky."

"How long?" Remo asked hoarsely. It was just starting to sink in.

"A few weeks. Possibly a month. He's asking for you to take him home. I think that would be best. There's obviously nothing we can do further. Take him home, and make him comfortable."

"There's no hope?"

"None whatsoever. People his age-when they get sick, even from minor ailments-they almost never fully recover. He seems to be able to accept that. You should too."

Remo returned to Chiun's bedside. Chiun seemed smaller somehow, as if his great essence had shriveled within the frail husk that was his body.

"Little Father, I will take you back to Folcroft with me."

"Do not be silly, Remo," Chiun said quietly. "That is no place for a Master of Sinanju to spend his last days. We will enjoy them in Sinanju . . . together."

"Are you sure it's this bad?"

"Remo, I will not deceive you on this. I am entering my final days on earth. Inform the Emperor Smith to make the necessary arrangements. I wish to leave the sights and smells of this barbaric land for all time."

"Yes, Little Father," said Remo, and there were tears in his eyes as he left the room.

Chapter 5

The chill November dawn shone through the huge picture window overlooking Long Island Sound and found Dr. Harold W. Smith still at his desk. He was a tall man, with thinning hair and rimless glasses. His three-piece suit was gray. Almost everything about the man was gray, washed-out and colorless.

But Smith, sitting behind the administrator's desk at Folcroft Sanitarium, was anything but colorless. Next to the President of the United States, he was the most powerful man in the U.S. government. Some might say more powerful, because Presidents came and went, but Harold W. Smith, appointed the sole director of CURE, held forth, unelected and unimpeachable.

Smith tightened his striped Dartmouth tie as he waited for the computer terminal on his desk to process news digests coming from the city of Detroit. Another man, after working through the night, would have long before loosened his tie. But not Smith. He wanted to be presentable when his secretary came to work.

The information from Detroit was good. There were fewer fires this year, and most were under control. But it was odd that no reports regarding one Moe Joakley had surfaced. Odder still that Remo hadn't checked in.

Smith saved the Detroit digests as a separate file and went on to other incoming data. His fingers brushed the keyboard with a concert pianist's unselfconscious ease. The tiny terminal was deceiving. It hooked up to a bank of computers in a sealed room in Foicroft's basement. These linked up to virtually every data base in the United States, and a few elsewhere. They scanned all computer traffic automatically, sifting through data transmissions for indications of'criminal or unusual activity. Twenty years of CURE database lay stored in its secret files, a backup data base in another secret computer bank on the island of St. Martin. If Remo was the enforcement arm of CURE, and Smith was its brain, the CURE computers were its heart.

Before Remo, Smith had fought his own private war through his computers, sifting computer links for tipoffs to improper stock transactions, large bank transfers that might reveal bribes received or the movement of drug money. Through unsuspected connections to the IRS and Social Security Administration files, he possessed unmatchable identification facilities. An army of informants in all walks of life reported to Smith through these computers, never suspecting they were reporting to an unknown organization called CURE. In the pre-Remo days, Smith anonymously tipped off the proper law-enforcement agencies to crimes in the making. Now he did that with only the routine problems. On the big stuff he sent in Remo Williams.

It was illegal, of course, but CURE was not a legal entity. Just a necessary one. Data streamed into Smith's computer, were sorted and tagged. Criminal patterns, aberrations in money and stock transfers, in arms and goods, triggered red flags built into the software. Important criminal activity in the making was thus targeted and offered to Smith as a probability readout, for possible action.

With the end in sight, Smith could see a day when more of his work would return to those days before he had ordered Remo Williams pressed into CURE's service. Maybe ordinary law-enforcement agencies could take up the burden. For a brief second Smith thought about retirement, then dismissed it.

There could be no retirement for a CURE operative. Just death. Near the basement computer bank there was a coffin with Smith's name on it. It was there in case a presidential directive ordered Smith to disband CURE for security reasons. A secret such as CURE could not be saved for retirement. Smith was prepared to die.

Smith dismissed the thought from his mind. Something was wrong with the computer, the screen was dimming. Brownout.

CURE's computers ran off Folcroft's supposedly dormant backup generators, but they were failing. Smith touched a switch beside the terminal, switching power from the generators to Folcroft's main lines.

The screen brightened.

"Memo to Mrs. Mikulka," Smith said into a pocket memo recorder. "Have the emergency generators overhauled."

The phone rang.

"Harold?" an older woman's voice asked. It was Smith's wife. Even she called him Harold. It was never Harry or Hal.

"Yes, dear?"

"Will you be home for lunch?"

"No. I will be working through the day."

"I worry about you, Harold. Working all night like this."

"Yes, dear," Smith said absently, watching the screen.

"Don't forget to have a good breakfast." The CURE line began blinking.

"One moment," Smith said. "I have another call." He switched to the other phone, putting his wife on hold.

"Yes, Remo. You were successful?"

"Chiun is dying," Remo blurted out.

Smith said nothing for a long moment. "You are sure?" he asked carefully.

"Of course I'm sure. Dammit, would I say something like that if I wasn't sure? The doctors say it's so and even Chiun says it's so."

"What's wrong with him?"

"No one knows."

Smith thought Remo sounded close to tears. He said, "I'll arrange a special flight. We'll bring Chiun back to Folcroft. The finest doctors will examine him."

"Forget all that crap. Chiun wants to go home. He says he wants to die there."

"There are no medical facilities in Sinanju," Smith said flatly. "We can do more for him here."

"Look, Chiun wants to go home. So he's going home. Set it up, Smitty!"

"It's not that simple," Smith pointed out with implacable logic. "Chartering a U.S. nuclear sub isn't like calling a cab. The Darter is in San Diego being refitted for the annual shipment of gold to Chiun's village. It leaves in two weeks. We'll bring Chiun here and attend to him until the sub is ready."

"We're going to Sinanju, Smitty. Now. Even if I have to steal a plane and fly it myself."

Remo's tone of voice was shocking in its vehemence. "Very well," Smith said, with more calmness than he felt. "I will arrange a flight to the west coast. A submarine will be waiting at the usual spot. You know the drill."