Warren Murphy: The Arms of Kali

Secrecy. It was everything.

And now Smith was in Boston and there on the page facing the sports page was an advertisement with a familiar face, the slit eyes, the wisp of a beard. It was a public appeal to stop amateur assassins. It was Chiun.

Chiun's face, right there in the newspaper. Hundreds of thousands of people looking at his face.

Smith realized he had read the advertisement several times before recovering. There was no mention of Remo and no mention of the organization. Chiun, fortunately, had never seemed to understand what they were doing anyhow. Smith saw that the paper was shaking in his hands. He tried but couldn't stop it. There was that face that was supposed to share secrecy, right there in the paper along with that insane appeal: "STOP AMATEUR ASSASSINS."

Smith put the paper on the cab's backseat. He could see the worst coming on. Television cameras surrounding Chiun. There in the background would be Remo. And that would be the end. To have Remo's face on the television news. It would all be over and it had started unraveling right here with this newspaper ad.

Smith tried to calm himself. He could not go directly to the hotel; his presence before the TV cameras would just make things worse. He changed his destination to a good restaurant named Davio's, a mile or so down Newbury Street. He ordered salad and tea and asked to use the telephone. He told the hotel operator that he wished only to speak person to person to the occupant named Remo. No one else.

"He's not in, sir."

Good, Smith thought. Remo must have seen the ad and understood that he could not be compromised. Remo probably already was calling Smith's special number. Smith checked the small computer terminal inside his briefcase. No message had been received, according to his readout screen.

By evening, when Remo still did not make contact, Smith had a cab drive him to the Ritz Carlton. There were no television cameras in front, no newsmen in the lobby.

He had made a mistake, underestimating the ability of Boston newsmen to miss a news story. CURE had lucked up and maybe gotten out of this one alive. But no more. He was going to speak to Chiun. No. He would speak to Remo. They could not afford to keep Chiun in America -anymore.

While Smith was planning his ultimatum to Remo, numbers 105 and 106 were about to unpack their bags in a small motel in North Carolina when some downright friendly travelers who had helped them with their luggage said something funny about a pale yellow handkerchief that they wanted to put around their necks.

"Well, sure, but don't you think you've done more than a good Christian service already?"

"We're not Christians."

"Well, if it's a Jewish custom . . ."

"We're not Jews either," said the young people, who did not wish to discuss their religion with people who were going to be part of the services.

Chapter Three

"So?" said Remo. He handed the advertisement back to Smith.

"You know this compromises us," Smith said.

"Compromises," Remo snapped. "You compromise Chiun's honor every day. What have you given him? You ship gold to his village so that those deadbeats who live off him can stay alive. You tell him a few nice words and then you expect him to fall down all over himself. Listen, Smitty, this country has given him beans of respect."

"Respect?" Smith said. "What are you getting at?"

"You know, in the Ming Dynasty, there was a special chair for the emperor's assassin. The old shahs of Persia made their assassins nobles of the court. In Japan, they even imitated the walk of the old Masters of Sinanju. So he took out a little ad. So what?"

"I would have assumed," said Smith, "that you, most of all, would understand."

"Just give me the job," Remo said. "Who do you want killed?"

"You're sounding strange," Smith said.

"Maybe. So he bought an ad. What difference does it make?"

"The difference between whether this little island of law and democracy, this very small island in a very big sea of time, is going to make it. The world has never seen a place where so many people come from so many places to live so free. Do we help preserve it or not? That's the difference it makes."

"I'm surprised that you would be giving a speech," Remo said.

"I give it to myself sometimes," Smith said. The old man lowered his head. Remo saw that the years had taken their toll on him. He was not like Chiun, for whom time and pressure were only ingredients in a larger cosmos. To Smith they were burdens, and the burdens showed. Smith was old while Chiun would never be old.

"Don't feel bad," Remo said. "I give myself the same speech sometimes."

"But do you listen?" Smith asked. "You've changed, Remo."

"Yes, I have." He wondered how he could explain it. He still believed as Smith believed. But now he knew that Smith was carrying some kind of death in the left pocket of his gray vest, something to kill himself with. Probably a pill, should he be facing some situation in which he might be captured and talk.

In the beginning of his training, when Remo was still an American patriot first, last, and always, he would have known how he could tell that there was death in that vest pocket. He might have observed the tender way that Smith treated that pocket. There was always some obvious tip-off. People never forgot they had death on them, and they touched it. Their bodies moved differently. They sat differently. And at the beginning of his training, Remo noticed those things and knew what they meant.

Now he no longer noticed those things. He just knew. He knew that Smith had death in his vest and he did not know anymore exactly how he knew. This is what made him different from before.

What he did know was that although he was still an American, he was now also Sinanju. Chiun was the reigning Master of Sinanju, but Remo was a Master of Sinanju also. The only other one in the world. He was two things in one place. America and Sinanju. Oil and water. Sunlight and darkness. And Smith had asked him if he had changed. No, he hadn't changed. Yes, he had changed completely.

When he said nothing, Smith said, "We have a problem with airline travelers."

"What else is new? Get the airlines to spend less money on advertising and more money on baggage handling and you won't have any more problems with travelers," Remo said.

"These travelers are being killed," Smith said.

"Hire detectives."

"They've had them. All over the country. Travelers are being killed. They fly on just Folks Airlines and then they're strangled."

"That's too bad, but what's it got to do with us?"

"Good question," Smith conceded. "This has been going on for a couple of years now. More than a hundred people have been killed."

"I haven't heard anything about it," Remo said. "I watch the news sometimes."

"You haven't been paying enough attention. They are always discovering somebody who killed fifty or sixty people and you've never heard of those killings either until the murderers are arrested. These killings are happening all over the country, so none of the newspeople have noticed yet. Every one of the victims is robbed."

"I still say, why us? So there are a hundred more deaths. So what? Nobody does anything about anything anymore anyhow. They just count the bodies." There was bitterness in Remo's voice. He had been with CURE for more than a decade, killing whoever Smith said to kill, all in the service of some greater common good. And America didn't look one damned bit better than it had before he had started.

"The whole thing's endangering travel," Smith said. "It has that potential and it could be quite serious."

"So that's it. We don't want some airline somewhere to lose a buck," Remo said.

"No, that's not it," said Smith sharply. "If you look at every civilization that has collapsed, the first thing that went was its road network. The first thing a civilization does is to establish safe roads. That's what makes commerce and the exchange of ideas possible. When you give up your roads to the bandits, you give up your civilization. And our roads are in the sky."