Warren Murphy: Killing Time

"Right again," Remo said. Anytime now. His mus­cles screamed in readiness. Beside him, he could feel Chiun's energy coiling like a spring.

"Then step forward," Halaffa said coldly. "Make

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your attempt." He slammed the book shut with a bang.

A big bang. Six bullets fired out of the thick binding directly at Remo. He dodged them, but it was a dis­traction. And as he was distracted, the shelf-lined walls of the tower swung open and a host of fierce-looking nomad warriors swarmed into the room, their sabers slicing through the air like lasers.

"Now we do the inside-line attack," Chiun said.

The sabers flew. Blood flowed like fountains over the intricate designs on the carpets in the tower room. The screams of the dying echoed down the stone stairways and empty corridors. And then all was still again.

Remo, Chiun, and Ruomid Halaffa faced one an­other. Halaffa's caftan was streaked with blood. His madman's eyes shone with terror and the knowledge of doom. For several moments he stood stock still, his eyes darling around the death-filled room, seeking an avenue of escape.

There was none. Only the small turret window be­hind him offered a way to the outside world, and that way was several stories straight down. He looked out the window. The pavement of the filthy street below was already teeming with people. They stepped lacon­ically over the fly-studded carcass of a dead dog lying near a vendor's cart filled with melons. The city was fully awake now, already blistering under the glare of the sun.

Halaffa faced his two assailants. "You will not take me!" he shouted, then turned and scrambled onto the window ledge. "My followers will smite you with wrath. They will finish you for the vile murderers you are. They will wreak vengeance on your paltry nation."

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Below, a few scattered onlookers glanced up to see their latest dictator ready to jump from a window ledge in one of the palace's twelve towers. He was shouting something. They were always shouting something. The last dictator, Anatole, shouted something before he died, too. So would the next one. The onlookers turned away and went about their business.

"Citizens of Zadnia," Halaffa bellowed. "The foes of our country have come to spread destruction and calamity in our midst. Rise up! Fight them! Fight them in the beautiful streets I have given you. Fight them in your comfortable homes, which have been my gift to you. Storm the palace and fight them as they stand ready to take your leader from you. Fight! Fight! Fight!"

"Enough of the pep talk," Remo said irritably. "Are they coming or aren't they?"

"Get up here and save my life, you miserable cre­tins," Halaffa yelled. "For the glory of ... glory of . . ." His arms windmilled. "Zad . . ." he shrieked, falling off the ledge.

He landed with a thud at the base of the melon ven­dor's cart, next to the dead dog. The vendor, seeing the wash of blood spray onto his pulpy fruit, screeched with annoyance at Halaffa's body. The flies on the dog quickly left their old meal and swarmed onto the new delicacy that had fallen into their midst. The people on the street stepped lazily over both of them.

"Thus dies the mighty rock," Chiun said. "Crum­bled to dust and lost among the forgotten sands."

Remo looked at him. "Say, that's pretty good," he said.

"An old Korean saying." He stepped across the bodies strewn around the room and lifted a large painting of Haiaffa framed in ornately carved gold.

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"This will do nicely," he said.

"You want a picture of him?"

"Of course not," Chiun said. With his thumbnail he etched four lines along the sides of the protrait, then punched it out. He handed the empty frame to Remo. "For you," he said.

Remo stared at the strange gift. "Well, thanks, Little Father, but! really--"

"It will make a nice frame for my picture of Cheeta Ching."

Remo groaned.

"In Korean dress," Chiun said.

Chapter Twenty

Harold W. Smith sat at his desk in front of the comput­ers at Folcroft Sanitarium, looking even more lemony than usual. In front of him was a tangle of green and white striped printouts.

"Where is Remo?" he asked, his voice acid.

"He wil! be here shortly," Chiun said.

Smith shook the sheaf of paper on his desk. "Fif­teen old soldiers dressed in World War II military uni­forms were found dead of various symptoms of old age in the Black Hills of South Dakota this morning," he said. "Do you know about this?"

"Should I?" Chiun asked innocently.

"They died of old age," Smith repeated.

Chiun shrugged. "We all have our time."

"This was the Team, wasn't it?" he sputtered. "Foxx's Team. Remo didn't kill them. They were under orders to murder the president of the United States, and he didn't kill them. That's the truth, isn't it?"

Chiun sighed. "What do I know," he said philosoph­ically. "I am but an old man, a being in the twilight of his years, who wishes only for a small ray of beauty to bring light into the weary darkness of his life. My one

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request to you, O mighty Emperor, was of a small pho­tograph of the lovely Cheeta Ching in the timeless garb of her native land. But lo, even that humble re­quest was denied. And I accept that denial. I am but an unworthy assassin whose knowledge is unwanted. I am but a small grain upon the pebbled beach of

life....''

"Oh, never mind," Smith said.

"Goddammit, I'm going to fry your ass," snarled Cheeta Ching as Remo tied the rope around her wrists into a neat square knot. Her feet were bound to the legs of the Bauhaus chair in Cheeta's living room fur­nished in early Gestapo. Remo still felt the bruises from that maneuver. The way the woman kicked, Remo reasoned she'd received her journalistic train­ing in the Viet Cong.

In the scuffle, he managed to drag her into the flow­ing red and yellow satin robes he'd rented from a cos­tume shop, but she'd slugged her way out of them three times, and by the time the newscaster was ade­quately restrained, the gown was a mass of tatters held together with several rolls of shiny scotch tape.

"I told you, I just want to get a picture," Remo said.

"Then call my press agent, asshole. From jail. Breaking and entering's a crime in this state, you tur­key."

"Yes, well, I'm sorry about that," Remo said, ad­justing his camera, "But I did ask you. And your agent. You both refused."

"Damn right, shitheel," Cheeta screeched. "Some pervert wants me to pose for him in this wierd getup straight out of a road show of Gilbert and Suliivan, what do you expe6t?"

"A picture," Remo said patiently.

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"I suppose you're going to rape me next."

"Wrongo," Remo said. "Smile."

"I know what you scumbags have on your minds. You see a gorgeous chick, all you want to do is whack it to her."

"I'll decide that if I happen to see one," Remo said. "You're drooling."

Cheeta seethed. "You know what you are?"

Remo sighed, advancing the film. He was going to get a whole roll of the harpy in all her glory, so that Chiun would have his choice of twenty-four different aspects of the nastiest human being on earth. And Remo wouid never have to return. "No. Tell me."

"You're a sexist, capitalist, imperialist, warmon­gering swine," she said, grinning triumphantly.

"Great," Remo said, snapping off two shots. The old man would like the smiling pictures. "What else?"

"Huh?"

"Tell me what else ! am."

She thought for a moment. "A foul, disgusting, loathsome degenerate?" she asked tentatively.

"Fine, fine," Remo said, snapping away. Those ex­pressions would pass for Serene Contemplation. "How about an obnoxious, offensive, vile, inhuman beast?" he offered.

Cheeta brightened. Her face came as close to inno­cent joy as it was ever going to get. "Hey, that's okay, really okay. You ought to go into the news business. There's lots of opportunity for creative writing in the news."