Warren Murphy: Master's Challenge

He directed the computers: "VACUUM DU LAC," then entered his code and hung up. In moments, he knew, the giant Folcroft computers would be sweeping clean all the memories from the Du Lac computers. Who knew what might be in those files? There might be some little bit of information that one day might provide him with leverage he might not otherwise have in dealing with America's enemies.

He looked up a number in his wallet and dialed.

The secretary of the interior answered the telephone himself. He was sleepy, and his voice was thick with exhaustion.

"Yes?" he said.

"This is Smith. Tell the president it's safe to come home."

He hung up and thought again of Remo and Chiun. There they were, off, gallivanting around on a vacation, leaving it to him to protect America and the free world. They'd hear about it when they got back. They'd hear what a hell of a nerve they had leaving all the dirty work for Smith while they were off disporting themselves.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Dutchman groveled on all fours, muttering. "You promised me, Nuihc. You said . . . you said ..."

Remo approached him like a man whose soul had died. His eyes were blank, his face expressionless. He stopped in front of the Dutchman and kicked him in the throat.

The Dutchman rolled over, startled.

"Get up," Remo said. Before the Dutchman could rise, Remo kicked him again.

"I have no quarrel with you," the blond man rasped.

"Think of one." Remo slapped him flat across the face.

The Dutchman stood to full height. "Don't do this," he warned. "I am trying-"

Remo sent two jabs to the man's belly. "I don't care if you fight me or not," Remo said quietly. "As long as 1 hurt you." He slammed an elbow into the man's hip, which sent the Dutchman sprawling.

A mist appeared instantly, settling over the landscape. The hills softened into pastel domes, like melting ice cream.

"And you can save the artwork, too. I know where you are."

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"Do you?" the voice came from behind him. Remo turned. Five identical figures, all the Dutchman, peered at him through the fog. "Where am I, Remo?"

The five figures disappeared. Another materialized beside him. Remo swung at it. It faded into smoke. "Or am I everywhere?" In a flash of light, the ice cream mountain-tops glowed in phosphorescent colors. On the peak of each stood the Dutchman, hundreds of him, like tiny paper cutouts.

Remo stood still and watched. There were no birds in the sky. The fields were quiet. The Dutchman was real, he told himself, no matter how many figments of himself he could produce. And that one real being moved on two legs like anyone else. Remo shifted his eyes out of focus and concentrated entirely on his peripheral vision.

Through the fog, to the right of Remo, a figure ran, crouching. He moved swiftly and silently, using all the skill of a lifetime of training. He climbed the highest hill in the area, stopping behind a large dead tree.

Another figment appeared directly beside Remo, prepared to strike. Remo clenched his jaws and walked through it. He had things to do now.

Kiree . . . Kiree and Ancion. They had both known things that were new to Remo. Things that could help him against an enemy more powerful than himself. If he could just remember. He stooped to gather two handfuls of grass and a rock the size of a baseball. He stuffed the rock inside his belt and began to rub the blades of grass.

Lightning flashed across the sky. A high wind gusted out of nowhere. Remo ignored them, and was left untouched. He concentrated on disintegrating the grass, as Kiree had done, his hands moving so fast that the moisture in the blades evaporated instantly. He spat, slapping his hands together in rhythm.

He had to take the Dutchman by surprise. No matter

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how fast he ran, the Dutchman would see him coming in plenty of time to perform one of his tricks. Remo knew that the changes in weather and the constantly shifting landscape were visual lies, but the Dutchman could be subtle. What if he made Jilda burst into flame? Or caused the top of Griffith's head to explode like a firecracker? They weren't invulnerable to his ugly games. No, this contest had to be between Remo and the Dutchman, one on one. Remo didn't expect to win, but he wasn't about to make anyone else take the loss with him.

"Fool," the Dutchman sneered. "You waste my time."

Remo spat into his hands again. The pulp was almost the right consistency. He pulled his hands away, and like taffy, the wire-thin fibers formed. He worked quickly, weaving the fine, transparent net around the rock. His hands were moving too fast to see.

"Your skin is burning," the Dutchman insinuated. "Your eyes are dry and withering. Blisters cover your body."

"Go eat a toad." It was ready. With'one swing, Remo wound the net around a tree and swung up. The second propelled him to a boulder. On the third orbit of the net, he flew toward the crag where the Dutchman waited and landed with both feet in the blond man's chest.

"Thanks, guys," he said to the spirits of Ancion and Kiree. Somewhere, he felt, from some unknown vantage point, they were watching.

With a whoosh of air from his lungs, the Dutchman fell down the hill. At its base, he righted himself awkwardly and ran. Remo followed him. The ground was soft and covered with holes. The snakes, Remo remembered. Watch it. He can make them come out your ears if he wants to.

But the Dutchman had no hallucination waiting. He stood beside an open pit, absorbed in its swarming interior. Remo approached, standing across the wide hole from him. The pit contained the skeletons of four men, picked

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clean by scavengers. They were loosely draped in rags that had once been uniforms of some sort. Over them crawled more snakes than Remo had ever seen in one place.

The two men circled the pit. The Dutchman's eyes were pale and lucid, the maniacal fire in them gone. Instead, they held a look of bewilderment as he searched Remo's face.

"Who are you?" the Dutchman asked. It was a plea. Strange music came to Remo on the wind. Faint but insistent, the dissonant melody was the same as the strains he had heard when he first came to the shores of Sinanju with Jilda and the others. It had filled him with terror then, but now the music carried no more fear than a passing breeze. It was the Dutchman's music, but devoid of the Dutchman's power.

He feeds on fear, Remo thought. When he had stopped caring whether he lived or died, he had lost his fear of the Dutchman. And without the fear, he was no longer a victim.

The music swelled again, and suddenly Remo recognized it for what it was. It had sounded oddly familiar the first time he heard it, but didn't understand why. Now he knew. He had heard the same notes long ago, in a small boat setting off to carry him to the first stop in the Master's Trial. It was Chiun's music, note for note, only distorted, a perversion of the songs of Sinanju.

And as he watched the Dutchman standing in mirror image of himself, he understood the music's meaning. "I am you," he answered.

Yin and yang.

Light and shadow, good and evil, Remo and the Dutchman were opposite sides of the same being. They were born of the same traditions, both white men taken out of their societies and created anew in the ways of Sinanju. They both claimed Masters of the discipline as their fathers.

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Only fate had kept them apart for so long. Now, together, they formed a whole that could only end in destruction.

"If I kill you, I will die," the Dutchman said, sounding almost relieved. "It was you all along. I have been seeking the wrong man."

"You killed him."

"As I must kill you," the Dutchman said.

In one perfect spiral leap, he crossed the pit and delivered a blow to Remo's chest. His ribs broke under the impact. He tried to right himself, but the Dutchman was too fast. Remo felt a shattering pain in his kneecap that sent him flying toward a boulder. He landed on his shoulder.