Warren Murphy - The Last Alchemist

When it did come, Caldwell dismissed everyone. He wanted to talk alone.

"What's wrong?" asked Caldwell.

"They are proving very resourceful."

"I have not made you my sword to find out that there is competition."

"They will be taken care of very soon."

"In the grand days of the court, there would be combat between men to decide who would be the king's champion, who would be the king's sword."

"I will take care of these two now. There is no way they are going to escape now. There will be no problem."

"We appreciate your assurances," said Caldwell, "but we cannot help but remember the grand tournaments of royal Spain. This does not mean we do not have faith in you, Francisco. This only recalls our pleasure in thinking about such tournaments. Can you imagine finding another king's champion today?"

There was silence on the other end of the phone. "What seems to be the problem, Francisco? We know that if there is a problem with the king's sword, there soon is a problem with the king's neck."

"They are exceptional. And they will soon be exceptionally dead."

"How can you give us those assurances, since obviously you have failed at least once or twice before?"

"Because, your Majesty, they cannot escape the world they live in. I am simply going to destroy their world, and them with it."

"You please us, Francisco," said Harrison Caldwell, wondering what a destroyed world would look like. He also wondered whether he should have searched more diligently for a personal sword.

Francisco Braun's Portuguese was not as good as his Spanish but it was good enough to get just the kind of engineer he wanted. The man had a drinking problem which fortunately did not impair his competence, but most fortunately impaired his morals.

He kept looking at the diagrams and shaking his head. "Why don't you just shoot them?" he asked after he had been paid.

"Why don't you finish the diagram of what has to be done?"

"Shooting is kinder," said the engineer. And he thought of what it would be like for those who would know they were going to die, those who would be helpless to do anything about it. He took another drink.

"Are you sure it will work?" asked Francisco.

"I'd bet my life," said the engineer, who had worked on some of the high rises on the beautiful beaches of Rio.

"You just have," said Braun.

There were problems in finding James Brewster in Rio. For one, the South American police were not that cooperative. Second, the three of them could not canvas the whole city, nor would it help them if they could: if James Brewster had stayed in Rio, no doubt, he had changed his name. Last but not least, none of them spoke Portuguese, except Chiun, who refused to help when Consuelo explained what they were looking for.

Chiun made his feelings clear in a luxury hotel room, while he prepared a scroll. It was time to record the second meeting of Sinanju and the Anxitlgiri.

"Chasing thieves is not my business," said Chiun, trying to capture exactly each syllable of the laudation odes so that future generations would know how well Sinanju had been received again in the person of Chiun.

"We may be saving the world from nuclear destruction,'' said Consuelo.

And with that, Chiun dismissed her from his presence. Consuelo didn't know what she had said to offend him.

"Why should he be so angry about saving the world?"

"Because that's what I was trying to do when I should have been helping him recover the treasure of Sinanju."

"Is it that valuable?"

"Some of it was junk. But after a few thousand years you have to collect some valuable things. Gold, jewels, and the like."

"You make it sound trivial."

"If you don't spend it, what good is it? One gold bar could feed a Korean village for a century. They eat rice and fish. Sometimes duck. They like duck. But they never spent it. Look, don't worry about it. We don't need him to find Brewster."

"But you don't speak Portuguese."

"A friendly manner overcomes all barriers," said Remo.

Remo was right. You did not need a pocket translator to find a policeman who spoke English. You simply grabbed a policeman and twisted, speaking plainly and clearly in English: "Take me to your commander." There was no language barrier this simple gesture could not overcome.

Soon they were in the commander's villa. No decent police career in South America ever resulted in anything less than a villa. And no decent citizen would arrive at that villa to request justice without enough cash to pay for that justice. Remo, unfortunately, had not brought money, he explained.

The commander expressed his sorrow, but he would have to arrest Remo for assaulting the policeman he had by the neck. One didn't come down to a South American country and rough up a policeman without money in the pocket. The commander rang for the guards. Remo took their weapons and shredded them neatly onto the commander's lap. Then he showed the commander a very interesting North American message. It made the shoulder blades feel as though they were being ripped out of the body.

Its purpose was to improve his disposition. Overcome with brotherly love, the commander pledged the honored assistance of his entire police force. Would the gringo guest please replace his shoulder blades?

"Tell your commander they are still there," Remo told the policeman who acted as translator. "They only feel as though they have been ripped out."

Remo waited for the translation. The commander asked if the honored guest could make the shoulder blades feel as though they were back in the body.

"Tell him, when we find a man named James Brewster, he will feel fine. Brewster came down here by plane a few days ago, and he probably has another name by now. We have his picture."

The search was strange from the beginning. The police force was so motivated by the sight of their bent, aching commander that it took neither threat nor reward to mobilize them. Same of the detectives commented that they had been inspired by justice, just like the American policeman "Dirty Harry."

Even stranger, when the policemen located the fugitive, after less than a day, no one handed any of them an envelope of cash.

They assumed Remo was a policeman. They asked how policemen got paid in America.

"By checks from their governments."

"Oh, we get those sometimes," said one of the detectives. "But they're too small to cash."

According to the police, James Brewster was now Arnold Diaz, alive and ensconced in one of the elegant high-rise apartment buildings facing the glorious beach of Rio de Janeiro.

Chiun, having finished recording the meeting with the Anxitlgi, agreed to visit with Consuelo and Remo. Downstairs, in the marble-floored lobby, Consuelo rang the buzzer for Arnold Diaz. Brewster's voice answered.

"Who is it?"

"It's us, sweetheart," said Remo.

The groan that echoed through the lobby came via the electronics from fifty stories up. The intercom suddenly switched off.

"I have a questioning technique that might be a bit more helpful with Brewster," said Remo. "I don't like guys who sell uranium on the open market."

"After what we've been through," said Consuelo. "I could almost agree with you."

"I'll be friendly," said Remo. "He'll tell us everything."

The elevator was paneled with fine wood polished to a gloss. There were even little seats. When an elevator, even a fast one, had to rise fifty stories, it took time. But the people who lived in this building weren't used to discomfort, no matter how brief.

As the elevator sped upward, Consuelo felt her ears pop as though she was taking off in an airplane. Her stomach seemed to leave her somewhere near the thirtieth floor. By the time they reached the fiftieth floor, she was dizzy and resting on one of the seats.