Warren Murphy: Date with Death

"Call five of your buddies on duty to come here, and you can keep it." He shoved the boy into the back seat and slammed the door. "Uncle Sam needs you," he said in parting.

Like a kick in the pants, Remo thought after the cab pulled away. Well, what the hell. It was worth a try, and it was better than killing the kid. Even a professional assassin couldn't go around murdering every cretin who rubbed him the wrong way.

But what had made him think of the army, Remo wondered as he began the endless task of carting Chiun's trunks from the motel room to the waiting taxis. His own time spent in service had been so long ago. Long ago and better forgotten, along with the rest of the life that used to belong to him.

More than ten years since he'd left the army to become a cop.

More than ten years since he'd ceased to exist.

According to all his records, Remo Williams was a dead man. He had died in an electric chair for the crime of killing a dope pusher. It had been all smoke and no fire, though, a clever magician's illusion. In the end, Remo had not been fast-fried. This was a twisted bit of poetic justice, because he hadn't offed the pusher to begin with.

It was all part and parcel of an elaborate frame-up engineered by one Harold W. Smith. All the strings had been pulled from a comfortable chair that was parked in front of a computer console secreted away in the depths of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York. Like some mad prestidigitator, Smith had pulled off one macabre trick after another to make Remo into the nonperson he wanted. A fraudulent arrest, a fraudulent trial, and then a fraudulent death, cheated by Smith's sleight of hand. The performance had been planned down to the last detail, even to the substitution of another body for Remo's.

All this had taken place for the sole purpose of providing Harold Smith with a man who officially did not exist. Remo was a perfect candidate: an orphan without family ties, a rogue cop who was dead, buried, and soon to be lost to memory.

After Remo regained consciousness a few days after his bogus electrocution, he learned the bizarre destiny that he was expected to fulfill. Remo was to be the sole enforcer for CURE, an illegal organization developed by Harold W. Smith for the United States government. CURE's purpose was to fight crime outside the limits of the Constitution.

Smith's orders for CURE came directly from the President of the United States— the only other individual besides Smith and Remo who knew of the organization's existence. Even Chiun, Remo's trainer and teacher, had no real knowledge of how CURE worked. As far as Chiun was concerned, he was preparing Remo for the task of protecting Harold W. Smith after Smith had usurped the crown of the United States and proclaimed himself Emperor of America.

It was how the ancient Masters of the Korean village of Sinanju had earned their keep for thousands of years. Sinanju was a poor village, with nothing to trade for food. Its only asset was a physical power that in lesser hands, in later years, came to be known as martial arts. The Masters of the fighting techniques of Sinanju were the greatest killers on the face of the earth, and it was this ability they eventually rented to rulers of other lands in order to support their village.

Traditionally, each Master of Sinanju trained a pupil to take his place after he was gone. Untraditionally, the present Master of Sinanju— Chiun— had been saddled with a full-grown white man as his apprentice. That was part of Harold W. Smith's contract with Chiun. The old Oriental was to train Remo Williams in exchange for a submarine full of gold bullion to be delivered yearly to the village of Sinanju.

At first, Chiun had thought it would be an impossible task to teach a soft, meat-eating white the secrets of the most difficult discipline of all the martial arts. But with time, even the old Master had to admit that Remo possessed an almost uncanny aptitude.

Remo, for his part, resented having his identity snuffed out by a computer system, and resisted strongly Smith's mandate that he become a professional assassin. There was something vaguely un-American about the vocation Smith had chosen for him.

But Smith talked and Remo thought about the day an assassin's bullet snuffed out the life of the very president who had founded CURE. It was obvious that such evil could only be countered by an equally deadly force. Two minutes after his inauguration, the new president was offered and accepted the awesome burden of CURE'S continued existence.

The memories faded as Remo walked back into the motel room for the thirteenth time.

"Let's go, Little Father," Remo puffed as he picked up the last three trunks.

Chiun waved him away distractedly. He was sitting on one of the beds in the room, engaged in rapt conversation with the chambermaid.

" 'All My Relatives' is pretty good," she said know ledgeably, "but there was nothing like 'As the Planet Revolves.' It was my all-time favorite." She stubbed out a cigarette in an ashtray overflowing with lipstick-tipped butts.

"Mine, too!" Chiun squealed. The white hair on his head and chin bobbed in agreement.

"That Rad Rex is a dreamboat." She shifted her pink nylon uniform around her massive thighs. "What a hunk."

"And Mona Madrigal," Chiun rhapsodized. "The loveliest of women. Perhaps she is Korean."

"Maybe so," the maid said, creasing her forehead with thought. "I mean, she was short and everything. It didn't say so in this magazine article I read. It just said she got divorced."

"What a pity," Chiun said, clucking in sympathy. "But then, only the most extraordinary of men could please one so beautiful as Mona Madrigal."

The maid shrugged. "I dunno. It said she was living in Santa Fe."

"Don't you have some work to do?" Remo asked irritably.

The maid snorted and lumbered to her feet. Chiun patted her hand. "Don't mind him," the old man whispered. "Some people have no soul."

"It's a side effect that comes from breaking your back," Remo groused as he shuffled out of the room with the trunks.

Harold Smith was heavily disguised. Instead of his usual three-piece gray suit, steel-rimmed glasses, and briefcase, he was wearing a brown three-piece suit, steel-rimmed glasses, and carrying a briefcase. It was as much imagination as he had ever shown.

"Don't act like you know me," Smith muttered as he passed Remo and Chiun in the airport corridor. "Meet me at Gate Twenty-seven."

"As you wish, Emperor," Chiun said, bowing low. "We will tell no one that we are to meet you at Gate Twenty-seven. Your loyal assassins are at your service at all times, O illustrious one…."

"I think he wants us to ignore him, Little Father," Remo said.

"Nonsense. No emperor wishes to be ignored. It is why they desire to be emperors."

"Smitty's not an emperor," Remo said flatly. He had explained Smith's status to Chiun almost daily for the past ten years.

"Of course not. Heh heh. One does not wish to be called emperor while the current emperor still holds the throne. Heh heh."

"Forget it," Remo said.

Gate twenty-seven was crowded with passengers lining up for boarding. Smith pretended not to notice the dark-haired young man with the exceptionally thick wrists and the old Oriental dressed in flowing robes as they sat next to him in the waiting area.

"You're late," he said, his New England accent twanging acerbically.

"Best I could do," Remo said.

"Well, never mind that. There isn't much time. You're to board that plane." He nodded toward the line of passengers moving up the ramp.

"Where're we going?"

"New Mexico. There's been a rash of unexplained murders in the mesa."

"So? They've got police in New Mexico."

"A rash. More than three hundred in a matter of weeks. All unidentified. Mexicans, by their clothes and features. No similarities as to age, sex, occupation— only in the method of execution. They all died of single bullet wounds in the head."