Warren Murphy: The Last Alchemist

"Stay on the girl going down. The mother's screaming is going to go on far half an hour. Plenty of footage there."

Nathalie Watson, her handsome, strong woman's face with fashionable swept hairdo, steamed over to the cameraman.

The producer was whispering furiously into some form of headset.

Nathalie ripped it off him.

"I will not do a voice-over. I have been doing voiceovers all day. I want live."

"Nathalie, precious, we love you but this is good footage," said the producer.

''There's always good footage. That's why I am doing voice-overs all day."

"It's the first drowning of the year, live," said the producer.

"Someone. Please. My girl," cried the mother, and then she looked at Remo, Remo who was turning away, Remo whose years of training served an organization that dared not be known to exist. Remo who, in the absolute best interests of his country, was a lone assassin, a man who didn't exist. And therefore could not be on a television camera, or photographed. He was a man whose fingerprints were no longer checked against files, because he was dead. Had been for well over a decade, the victim of a well-planned, carefully executed fake death. The man who didn't exist for the organization which didn't exist.

He had been trained to discipline his feelings. Thoughts, after all, were the real power of the human body, not the crude, weak muscles. Even his dreams at times were as controllable as fingertips. So he told himself he should not be bothered by this.

And then he saw the mother's eyes lock with his, and heard the word "please."

And all of it went. The years of it went. The training of it went. The analysis of the situation went. And Remo was moving, the legs following the force of the body, the absolute perfection of movement. Smooth, as though the legs were like feathers, and the air, not a barrier, but a moving part of a universe. He heard the pads of his shoes tap the thin ice like the soft pop of a cellophane cake wrapper. His feet did not pound the ice but moved with the mass of water beneath it, his thin body feeling the prickly cool of the still-chill Michigan spring. Pine trees, green and fragrant, rimmed the lake, and he could sense the weak rays of the sun on his body that floated as it moved, quick with the light feet. And then he was at the girl and with his left hand he scooped her up out of the water as though fielding a baseball and continued the open fifty yards to the rest of the ice on the other side of the lake.

It was that fifty yards that caused the cameraman to check his focus, the producer to let out a shriek, and even Nathalie Watson to stop complaining about her lack of camera time.

"Did you see that?" said the producer.

"Did I see what I saw?" said Nathalie. "The guy ran on water."

"To hell with the drowning. We don't have it anyway unless the kid goes back in the water, which I don't think she will."

"I don't think she will either," said Nathalie. "That mother won't let her. I'll do a live with the man who runs on water."

"Okay," said the producer.

"What happened?" cried the mother, trying to brush the tears away to see her daughter better, her daughter now coming very quickly to her in the arms of that man who had gone out to save her. He was running with her along the lake shore. The mother hadn't seen what he had done. All she saw was that her daughter was going to live. The crowd behind her cheered.

Nathalie Watson moved through the crowd toward the mother. That was where the man who ran on water would be. With any luck, provided no one shot the President or something-and that could happen with bad luck-Nathalie Watson and her strong handsome woman's face were going to be on camera this evening not only Michigan north, but network national. She was heading toward thirty seconds of national exposure.

"What happened? What happened?" asked the mother.

"We're going to do an interview," said Nathalie.

"My baby," said the mother, and reached out her hands. Remo saw the hands, saw the pain and joy, and put the child back in her mother's arms.

And then he smiled. He was feeling very good again. Good as when he was seventeen in a New Jersey city drinking beer from a bottle, feeling very much grown-up the night before he was to enter the Marines. No. Better than that. Then he felt grown-up. Now he felt like a human being.

And there was the camera looking at him with the big glass eye that was not only going to spread his face all over the country but show those special things he could do, so that from now on everyone would be looking for him if he disappeared. As the television newswoman approved, pointing the microphone toward his face, he suddenly wondered if he should wave to the folks upstairs and say hello. He could see Smitty, the head of the organization, choking on air if he said hello. Maybe he should say:

"Hi, America. I'm Remo Williams, and I can do these wonderful things because I have had training no white man has ever had before-and damned few Koreans, too, maybe one every half-century or so. Maybe you've seen me before. I kill a lot. So here I am, Remo Williams, saying your government couldn't survive within the Constitution, so they have me break it high, wide, and handsome just so we can all survive from week to week, from one disaster to the next."

He thought of that as the mother was hugging the little girl, kissing the cheeks, laughing and crying and thanking Remo, and really only happy she had the child back. He thought it while Nathalie Watson was asking him if he realized what he did. He thought of it, and then he thought of lemon-faced Harold W. Smith, chief of the organization, choking at the televised proof that the secrecy so many had died for had been destroyed on an impulse. Whoopee. And Remo Wiiliams began to laugh. And the laughter seized him.

"Sir, sir. Are you overjoyed? Is that why you are laughing?"

"No," laughed Remo.

"Why are you laughing?"

"Get the microphone out of my face," said Remo. There was moisture in his eyes.

The microphone came up closer to his lips.

"Get the microphone away from my face," said Remo. He was still laughing.

But Nathalie Watson, award-winning newscaster, was not going to be moved by something as insignificant as a personal request. Nathalie Watson, her good side toward the camera, moved the microphone a touch closer. Nathalie Watson saw the laughing man's hands. They seemed so slow. But somehow her hands were slower. Nathalie Watson was suddenly looking at the camera with a cord coming out of the center of her mouth. Something was lodged in her throat. It felt cold. It was metal. The microphone had a definite aluminum taste. She wondered what she looked like with a microphone cord coming out of her mouth. She looked at the camera and smiled. If the lunatic hadn't damaged her magnificent teeth, no harm would be done. She saw the laughing lunatic go up to the cameraman. He took the camera. The cameraman had been a linebacker at a Big Ten school. He had also gotten a degree in communications. This prepared him perfectly for carrying something heavy and pointing it. He did not take kindly to people grabbing his camera.

His playing weight had been 244 pounds of lean muscle. He had put on a bit more beef since then and now weighed 285. For the sake of beautiful Nathalie and his camera the lunatic was reaching for, the cameraman took a football-sized fist and pounded it down into his head. He was sure they would have to dig this guy out of the ground.

His fist felt quite funny as it struck. Was the guy's head metal? No. The truck was metal. The Channel 14 truck was all metal. It made a very loud sound. It made the sound because he was being thrown into it. It shivered and he collapsed.

Remo had the camera. He recognized it as the kind cameramen changed film with in one motion. One only had to slide it backward. It did not slide backward. Was it right-side-up? Remo slid the film magazine up. It did not slide up. Nor did it slide down or forward.