Warren Murphy: Killing Time

He pitched his voice low. "In five seconds I'm going to grab that pretty woman at the switchboard and tear ail her clothes off," he rumbled.

There was a little shriek from the other end before the line went dead. The receptionist's skirt billowed in the wind as she ran out the door.

Remo caught her before she hit the sidewalk. "Okay, what's the idea?"

"I-I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "Are you really going to tear all my clothes off?"

"You were listening in on my phone call. Who do you work for?"

"Nobody."

"Who?" He grasped her hand more tightly.

"Okay, okay," she said testily. "It doesn't matter, I suppose."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know. That's the truth. Somebody called me and asked me to monitor all the phone lines. The ones in the rooms are easier, but I can get the pay-phones, too, with a little switch on the wires."

"What for?"

"Who knows? He just wanted me to write down any­thing anybody said about the army, the navy, or the air force. I get twenty dollars for every item I send in to the computer information center in Albuquerque."

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"Computers?" Remo asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes. He said I'd get a government check.! figured he was from the CIA or the FBI or something like that."

"What did this guy sound like?"

"Sound? Well, kind of-lemony,! guess. That's the only way to describe it. Sort of like your Aunt Mildred."

"All right," Remo said with disgust. Smith had struck again. For an operation as minuscule in size as CURE, Smith had tentacles reaching into every corner of every city in the world. "Forget it. I didn't mean to scare you." He walked down the street.

"Hey, wait a minute," the girl called after him. Her face was a caricature of disappointment. "Aren't you going to rip off my clothes now?"

"Later," Remo said.

He found a pay phone down the street and dialed the Chicago Dial-a-Prayer number that connected au­tomatically with Smith's phone at Folcroft Sanitarium. "Yes?" came Smith's acid voice.

"What in hell are you doing now?"

"Meet me in one hour on Mott Street in China­town," Smith said.

"I want to know why you have henchmen listening in on my phone calls at the E-Z Rest Motel."

"Not yours, Remo. Everyone's. That person is one of thousands who've been contacted."

"What's going on?"

"I'll fill you in later. One hour. The dragon." Smith hung up.

There was only one dragon in Chinatown, and that was the one winding its way down Mott Street in the Chinese New Year's parade.

"Excuse me," Remo said, pressing his way through the crush of cheering spectators.

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"It is everywhere," Chiun said ominously behind him.

Remo looked around. "What's everywhere?"

"Pork," the old man said. "The smell of stir-fried pork is emanating from every barbaric Chinese mouth here."

"Take it easy."

"Only a white man would ask a Korean to tolerate a mob of pork-eating Chinese."

"Then why did you come along? You didn't have to come to Chinatown," Remo said irritably.

Chiun sniffed. "I came because it is my duty to come," he said archly. "As the Master of Sinanju, it is imperative that I attend to Emperor Smith's wishes personally."

"Little Father, I work for Smitty. You're my trainer. You don't have to come."

"I do," Chiun insisted. "When the Emperor wishes to bestow a gift upon a valued assassin, the receiver of that gift should be present. It is only polite."

"Gift? What gift?"

"The portrait of Cheeta Ching. Emperor Smith has promised it to me."

"You already have a portrait of that flat-nosed bar­racuda. You've made a shrine out of it."

"That portrait is of Cheeta Ching in Western dress I requested one of the beautiful and gracious lady at­tired in the traditional robes of her native Korea."

"She doesn't even know where Korea is. For her, the underside of one rock's as good as another."

"White lout. Pork eater."

"I thought the Chinese were the pork eaters of the day."

"Chinese, white, what difference does it make? A waste is a waste."

28

As they neared the multicolored paper-mache dragon, it began to wobble and stagger randomly down the street, knocking over a fried-noodle stand. Remo slid under the cloth sides of the beast in time to see Smith buckle in exhaustion to the ground. He picked Smith up with one arm while supporting the sweltering shell of the dragon with the other.

"You okay, Smitty?"

"You're fourteen minutes late," Smith said, con­sulting his Timex. "How long did you think! could hold this thing up by myself?"

"Sorry, Smitty." He set him on his feet. "Why are we meeting here, anyway?"

"Silence, brainless one," Chiun said. "The Em­peror has chosen to meet us in this teeming, stinking location because he is a man of great sensitivity and humility." He bowed to Smith. "He wishes to bestow his gift of beauty in the midst of squalor to demon­strate that loveliness can transcend all ugliness. Oh, very wise, Emperor. Most fitting."

"I'm not an emperor, Chiun," Smith began to ex­plain for the hundredth time. Chiun persisted in be­lieving that Smith had hired Remo and Chiun for the same reasons emperors throughout history had hired Chiun's ancestors. "Oh, never mind," Smith said.

"I am honored to accept your gift, O mighty one," Chiun said, smiling.

"Gift?" Smith looked to Remo. "What gift?"

"A picture of the Korean version of Godzilla in drag," Remo said.

"The photograph," Chiun prompted. "The portrait of the beauteous Cheeta Ching."

"I thought I got one of those for you."

"In ceremonial robes. The traditional Maiden's Por-

29

trait." His wrinkled face was falling in disappointment. "You have not forgotten?"

"Er, I'm afraid I have," Smith said impatiently. "I'll see what I can do. I've brought you here because what I have to tell you is of the utmost secrecy-and must remain so."

"Like the requests of your valued assassins," Chiun muttered.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Never mind," Remo said. "Go on."

Smith spoke urgently. "You know, perhaps, that the Secretary of the Air Force was murdered yesterday morning."

"I think I heard part of that. Burned by a flame­thrower or something."

"Right. What the press doesn't know is that last night the Secretary of the Navy, Thornton Ives, was murdered, too. Bayonetted. He was ambushed out­side the home of Senator John Spangler in Virginia. It looks like the work of more than one assassin."

"A white assassin," Chiun grumbled. "Only a white man would attempt to kill with a net. For a real assas­sin, one comes to the Master of Sinanju. But does one bother to honor the small request of the aging Master? Never. Perhaps we should use nets, too. We could bludgeon the enemy with the holes."

"A bayonet isn't a net, Little Father," Remo ex­plained. "It's a sort of spear on the end of a rifle."

"Oh, I see. The white assassin uses a rifle to stab with. Very efficient."

"Get off the snot, Chiun," Remo said in Korean. "Just because you didn't get your picture."

"Just because the one small light in my twilit years has been extinguished. . . ."

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"Please, please," Smith said. "We have limited time."

"Forgive me, O Emperor," Chiun said with humility. "I will not speak again. Who cares to hear the pleas of an old man, anyway?"

"Now really-" Smith began, but Chiun clamped his jaws together and turned his back. Smith sighed and went on. "The man who found the body, a gar­dener at the Spangler house, doesn't know anything. The FBI and the CIA have been grilling him ever since he reported the incident."