Warren Murphy: The End of the Game

"I mean--" He stopped and stood up and swiped quickly at his eyes with his sleeve. "I had something in my eye. I couldn't get it out." Without waiting for an answer, he pointed to the blood on Chiun's hands. "I saw it," he said. "The fight."

Chiun gasped when he saw the blood and quickly tucked his hands into the sleeves of his kimono. "Forgive me, Most Observant One," he said. "In my haste, I forgot to remove the chicken-liver juice." He turned his back to Smith, spat on his hands and rubbed them energetically together.

Smith looked to Remo, but Remo had gone.

Stifling a small cry, Remo had run across the face of the rock to where Pamela lay and knelt alongside her body. Smith saw him feel for a pulse and then Chiun came beside him and tore off part of his robe. He made a pad to soak up the young British woman's blood, but within seconds the pad itself was sopped wet. Chiun shook his head to Remo.

"Why'd you come, you pain in the ass?" Remo said chokingly to Pamela.

Her face strained. With an effort, she forced her eyes open.

"Don't talk," Remo said.

"Must," she said. Blood bubbled from a corner of her mouth. "Did we get him?" she asked.

"We got him," Remo said. "You didn't have to come for me," he said.

"Not for you. For England. It was my job. Did we save the world?"

"Yeah, Pamela," Remo said. "We done good. How'd you find me?"

"Bribed clerk at motel. Listened in on your phone call. Told me where." She tried to smile and her mouth leaked blood. "Always knew you were a liar."

Remo clenched his jaw. The skin over her eyelids was starting to discolor. She would be gone soon.

"Saved your friend's life," she said.

Remo thought: I wish I could save yours. But he only nodded.

"We got it done," Pamela said. Her voice was growing inaudible. Remo leaned closer and she said, "Remo."

"What?"

"Do it again, will you?"

"Do what?"

Slowly, with hands as weak as a baby's, she guided his hand toward her left wrist. It barely grazed her skin when the life went out of her eyes.

Remo stood, his own eyes moist. As he looked down at the body, Smith heard him mumble, "That's the biz, sweetheart."

Remo and Chiun went into Buell's underground fortress with Smith to make sure there were no other people hiding in there.

The subterranean apartment was empty and Smith marveled at the computers.

"Good God," he said. "These have every detail of the Russian and American defense systems inside them."

He jiggled and prodded the console keyboard, and occasionally emitted a soft exclamation of wonder.

Finally he picked up a telephone.

"Calling for help?" Remo said.

Smith gazed at him blandly. "Calling Folcroft. I've set these up so that my computers can strip them and absorb everything they've got."

"You don't need us anymore?" Remo said.

"No. I can handle this alone. You can go."

"All right," Remo said. At the doorway that led up to the rock plateau, he turned and said, "Smitty. Why were you crying before?"

Smith said, "I told you. I had something in my eye," and he turned back to the console.

* * *

"Would you have killed me?" Remo asked Chiun as they walked across the grassy field below the small mountain.

"Would the robin pluck the worm from the ground?"

"What does that mean?" Remo said.

"It means would the tide betray the moon who leads it to land?"

"Huh?"

"You are uneducable," Chiun said.

They passed a rise overlooking the nearby highway.

"So would you have killed me?"

"Keep flapping your big mouth and find out," Chiun said.

They got into Remo's car.

"I don't think you would have," Remo said as he started the engine.

Chiun grunted.

"Because you love me," Remo said.

Chiun grunted.

"You do love me."

The old man rolled his eyes heavenward.

"Don't you?" Remo demanded.

"Yak, yak, yak," Chiun shrieked, bouncing up and down on his seat. "You are the noisiest white thing who ever lived. Love you? It takes all one's will merely to tolerate you."

Remo smiled and drove onto the highway.