Warren Murphy - The Last Alchemist

Remo helped her to her feet. They waited by the door. It wasn't opening. Remo looked to Chiun. A loud ugly snap of metal could be heard on both sides of the cabin. Then came a louder metallic crack and the thump of a cable falling on the elevator roof.

Consuelo felt her stomach lurch into her throat. Her body felt light, as though it were being lifted, yet her feet were still on the cabin floor. She couldn't move them. It was as though her blood had decided to flow in a new direction.

She was falling. Remo and Chiun were falling. The entire cabin was falling. The lights went out. The sound of grating, scraping metal filled the cubicle. Consuelo had to catch her breath to scream. When she shrieked into the darkness, she barely heard Remo tell her she was going to live.

She felt a strong hand on one arm and fingernails on the other. Then she felt a slight pressure. Her feet no longer touched the elevator floor. They were lifting her! And then it was as though the world had crashed. The elevator cab landed fifty stories down, shattering the cabin roof, loosening the seat, leaving them all in a dark shambles. Yet all Consuelo felt was a slight bump. Somehow these two had lifted her, and themselves, at moment of impact. It was as if they'd fallen a single foot instead of fifty stories.

Above them, as though from the tunnel of a dark universe, came a single flashlight beam. Francisco Braun shone the light from the top of the elevator shaft down into the rubble beneath him. Way down, he saw a hand reach up out of the wreckage. He saw a face. He tried to make out exactly how mangled it was.

There were the teeth. He couldn't tell that far down if they were knocked out of a mouth. But they were surrounded by lips. Definitely lips. He peered closer, straining to follow the beam to the target. He saw the lips rise on the sides. They were smiling at him. Francisco Braun dropped the light and ran.

The flashlight hit the cab as Remo and Chiun helped Consuelo out of it. She was terrified. She was furious. She checked her body. It was all there. Everything was fine, except she was going to walk the fifty stories to James Brewster's now.

"C'mon. We'll take the other elevator," said Remo.

"Are you crazy?" she asked.

"No," said Remo. "Are you?"

"We almost got killed and you want to take another elevator?"

"We showed you you wouldn't get killed even if it crashed, so why are you afraid?" asked Remo.

"I almost got killed."

"There is no almost to getting killed. You're fine. C'mon."

"I'm not going. That's it. Call me a cowardly woman. I don't care."

"Who's calling you a coward?" said Remo.

"We're calling you irrational," said Chiun. "Not cowardly."

"I'm not going," said Consuelo.

"I'll question Brewster my way, then," said Remo.

"Go ahead. Anything. Go. I am not leaving the ground. For anyone. Anything. I was almost killed. You were almost killed."

"I don't know what she is talking about," Remo said in Korean to Chiun as they entered the elevator that worked. Doormen were running over to see what was the matter. Consuelo leaned against a piece of elegant statuary to gather her composure.

Remo and Chiun pressed fifty and went up to the fiftieth floor, sure the entire world was crazy. Hadn't they shown her she didn't even need safety brakes on an elevator when she traveled with them?

"Maybe it's me, little father," said Remo. "Am I getting crazy?"

"No crazier than I," said Chiun.

"That's what I thought. 'Almost killed.' They're crazy."

James Brewster saw the bolts on the door snap off. He watched the bar of the police lock wedged into the floor, the solid steel bar, bend backward like a safety pin as the door opened.

"Hi," said Remo. "I am being very friendly. I want to be your friend."

James Brewster wanted to be friends also. Chiun stayed in the doorway.

"Careful," said Chiun.

"Of what?" asked Remo.

"That gold is cursed," said Chiun, nodding to the pendant around Brewster's neck.

Remo looked again. The pendant seemed sort of ordinary, one of those rectangles of gold with a bullionist's mark, this one with an apothecary jar and a sword imprinted on it.

"It's just a pendant," said Remo.

"It's cursed gold. Don't touch it. If you remember the tale of Master Go . . ."

"What? C'mon. I thought you really saw something," said Remo. He walked over to James Brewster, who sat with a table between him and Remo. Brewster tried to keep that table between them, but was too slow. Remo caught up with him on his first lunge and shook hands to show friendship. Then he walked Brewster out onto the balcony and expressed his admiration of the view.

He pointed to the lovely beach fifty stories below them. He pointed with the hand that still held James Brewster. He pointed it over the balcony.

Then he explained his problem to the dangling man. James Brewster had shipped a deadly substance around America illegally. That substance could be used to make bombs, bombs that could kill millions of people. Why would James Brewster do such an antisocial thing as that?

"I needed the money."

"Who paid you?" asked Remo.

"I don't know. The money was just deposited into my account."

"Someone must have contacted you."

"I thought it was legal."

"With nameless people depositing large sums in your account?"

"I thought I had finally struck it rich. I needed the money. Please don't drop me."

"Who ordered you to ship the uranium over strange routes?"

"It was just a voice. From the nuclear agency."

"And you didn't ask who it was?"

"He said the money took care of who he was. I needed the money."

"What for?"

"I was driving last year's car."

"Do you know how many millions of people you endangered? Do you know what one atomic bomb can do?"

"I didn't know that they were going to use the uranium for bombs."

"What else would they use stolen uranium for?"

"Maybe they wanted to start their own electrical company," said Brewster. At that moment Remo no longer wanted to be his friend and stopped shaking hands. As James Brewster left the balcony's airspace, Remo snatched the funny pendant from his neck. Consuelo saw the body hit the place in front of the building. It landed like a water bag, with a single loud splat. Remo and Chiun arrived on the scene moments later. Remo was whistling.

"You said you were going to be friendly. You killed him for information. You killed him."

"I didn't kill him."

"What did you do, then?"

"I stopped being his friend," said Remo.

Chiun was walking several paces away from Remo. He now refused to walk near him.

"The gold is cursed," said Chiun.

Remo showed Consuelo the pendant. "Here. See this."

"It's gold. A gold pendant," she said.

"Right," said Remo. "A silly little trinket."

"It's cursed," said Chiun.

"You will now get your first lesson in the wonderful histories of Sinanju. See for yourself how accurate they are. The Master here says this little piece of gold is cursed. Because some Master a thousand years ago said some kind of gold was cursed, the decision is written in stone. Excuse me, nice paper. No discussion. No reason. It's cursed. Period. He won't even walk near me."

Chiun refused to even look upon such disobedience. He turned away from Remo. Defiantly, Remo hung the pendant around his neck.

At the airport, Francisco Braun saw his last plan evaporate as the pair entered. If they saw him, he would never be able to place the satchel of explosives on their plane. With anyone else, hiding behind the ticket counter was good enough concealment. With these two, he doubted they would miss him. Possibly they would kill him this time. There was a limit to how many times he could miss.

They had arrived earlier than he thought, and now a mere fifty yards away the white man was walking with Consuelo Bonner. The white man couldn't miss seeing him at this distance. Braun pushed back into the corner behind the counter, waiting for the last move. Maybe he would just throw the satchel and run. Maybe he would throw the satchel at the girl, and maybe they would try to save her. Maybe he would get in a shot. All the maybes he had tried to avoid all his professional life came to him as the white and the girl came closer. And miraculously the man did not see him. No recognition. No deadly smile. Nothing.