Warren Murphy: The End of the Game

"Then you will kill her?"

"Of course not. I don't do things like that. Listen, Jack, why don't you do yourself a bit of a favor and go see a headshrinker. It would do you good."

"I want to see you murder your Aunt Agnes. I want you to lick a fire hydrant at noon in Times Square. I want you to fornicate with a wildebeest in St. Peter's Square, I want you to punch the queen, kick the Duke of Edinburgh in the nuts, and throw a pound of warm caramel mousse on Prince Charles and Lady Di."

"Sounds ducky, love," said Pamela. She was laughing. Buell saw her. The tart was laughing. Up on the screen, the mirth was costing Abner Buell points. She was not taking him seriously. She was enjoying it.

A coworker came to her desk and flashed a message. Buell was able to read it. It said: WE GOT HIM.

Abner watched the excitement, saw an office manager appear, and heard someone in the back whisper how the number of the pervert had been traced. Abner waited for the excitement to reach a crescendo.

"Pamela, why are you so happy?" he asked.

"Listen, you bloody nance. We've got you now."

"Have your office manager dial me if you've got me."

"We'll find the line busy because you're on it," she said.

"Dial," Buell said. "Have the office manager dial if you're so smart."

He saw Pamela signal the manager sharply and whisper something. The manager nodded and dialed an adjacent phone. A ready light blinked on Buell's screen seven as soon as the telephone connection was made.

Abner pressed BLAST OFF. The manager's eyes widened as though stretched open by releasing rubber bands. Her mouth opened in agonizing pain and she dropped the phone. Everyone else in the office jumped away and covered their ears. The high-range penetration signal had worked. It gave Buell three hundred points. Better than nothing.

Pamela slammed the phone down and ran to the side of the office manager and Buell disconnected the line.

Little bitch.

He should have the computer center fire her. Buell owned the computer center-- although no one knew it-- and he could easily do that. He should have done it a long time ago when she first started causing him trouble.

She alone, of all the recipients of Insta-Charge extra money, politely reported an error and wouldn't stop until the bank had admitted the error. That had started an investigation which hadn't stopped until Buell had brought the late Detective Lieutenant Joe Casey onto his payroll.

From that day on, Pamela Thrushwell had been marked by Abner Buell for punishment, but so far she had managed to stay ahead of him. Damned plucky Brit.

But he had always seemed to have trouble with Brits, he reflected. There was that time a year ago when he had gotten into the British government's computers and almost had Her Majesty's government ready to drop out of NATO and sign a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union. But the British had found out at the last minute, started an investigation, and Buell had had to withdraw. He didn't like losing games, but because of the trouble he had caused the British, he didn't call that game a loss. He listed it in his records as a tie. He might return to it one day.

Abner Buell strolled into his bedroom, hopefully to end boredom with a few hours of sleep, but as he lay down in bed, a new game flashed into his mind.

Why was he wasting his time pulling the strings on meaningless little individuals or small nations that didn't amount to anything anyway? There were big things he could do. The biggest.

Nuclear war.

How about the End of the World game?

That was bang with a bang.

He lay in bed for a while thinking about it. Of course, if there was an all-out nuclear war, he would die too. He considered that for a while, then whispered his decision in the darkness of his bedroom.

"So what?" he said softly.

Everybody had to die sometime and nuclear destruction was preferable to being bored to death.

At last a game worthy of his talents.

The targets: the United States and Russia.

The goal: to get one of them to begin World War III.

He fell asleep with a smile on his lips and a warming thought in his heart.

At least if he started World War III, that plucky Brit bitch, Pamela Thrushwell, would get hers too.

sChapter Four

Usually Harold W. Smith gave Remo his assignments by scrambler telephone through a maze of connections and secret numbers that had in the past included Dial-A-Prayer, Off-Track Betting offices in New York City, and a meat-packing plant in Raleigh, North Carolina.

So when Remo got a message at the hotel desk telling him that his Aunt Millie was ill, he was surprised, because the message meant that Remo should stay where he was; Smith was on his way to see him.

When Smith arrived at the Atlanta penthouse that evening, there seemed to be a small chill between Remo and Chiun, although the CURE director couldn't be sure. There often seemed to be some small roiling contention going on between them, but nothing he was ever allowed in on.

On those few occasions when Smith mentioned it, Remo would be blunt and tell him it was none of his business. And Chiun would act as if the only important thing in the world was Smith's happiness, and that any friction between Remo and Chiun was "as nothing." But Chiun's apparent obsequiousness was really wind and smoke. It was even a more impenetrable wall than Remo's "None of your business."

This evening, there was something to do with melons. Chiun was convinced that Remo had forgotten melons and Smith assumed it was Remo's failure to buy them at the store. Although Smith wasn't sure that they even ate melons anymore. They never seemed to eat anything.

Smith opened his thin leather attach\a233 case whose innards were lined with lead to shield against any possible X rays. On a small typewriter keyboard, he punched in a code.

"Your fingers work with grace, O Emperor Smith," said Chiun.

"They're getting old," said Smith.

"Age is wisdom. In a civilized country, age is respected. Age is honored. When the elders tell of their traditions, they are treated with reverence, at least by those who are civilized."

Smith nodded. He assumed that Remo had been failing to revere something. He was not going to ask.

Remo lounged on a sofa wearing a T-shirt, slacks, and loose loafers with no socks. He watched Smith punch in the numbers. Smith had offered him one of those attach\a233-case computers once and said anyone could learn to use it. It could store information Remo might need, was not vulnerable to penetration because of the coding system, and could be used in conjunction with a telephone to get into the main computer system at Folcroft Sanitarium, where all CURE'S records were kept. Smith called it the most modern advance in computer technology. Remo refused it several times. Smith kept offering. Finally, when they met near a river one day in Little Silver, New Jersey, Remo accepted. He scaled the attach\a233 case like a piece of shale a quarter-mile down the river, where it sank without a trace.

"Why did you do that?" Smith had asked.

"I don't know," Remo had said.

"That's all? You don't know?"

"Right," Remo had said.

Smith stopped offering technological assistance after that.

Smith now closed the top of his attach\a233 case and looked across the room at Remo.

"What we have is a pattern. It's a pattern that has touched on something so frightening that we can't make head or tail of it," he said.

"So what else is new?" Remo asked.

"Any danger to the throne is a great danger," said Chiun. Remo knew that Chiun would automatically make anything Smith said into something of awesome proportions under the theory that in a peaceful kingdom, an assassin would starve. Like present-day lawyers, the Masters of Sinanju had learned through the ages that if the world was not fraught with peril, one had to do some intensive fraughting.