Warren Murphy: Spoils Of War

"How long will that part last?" Remo asked.

"Twenty or thirty years, for a good pupil. For you, perhaps half a century."

"Swell. Just around the corner. Guess I'd better order my ceremonial robes."

"It is written," Chiun said, ignoring him, "that a force from the West will come to challenge Shiva in the year of the dragon. According to the Korean calendar, that is this year."

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"Hey. That's what the voice said in my dream."

"I know."

"How do you know what my dream said?"

"Because the voice was mine. The Dream of Death comes to all persons, regardless of their ineptitude, who have mastered the most elementary levels of Sinanju. I saw that you were faltering, so I whispered the legend to give you direction and show you the way home. Had you listened when I attempted to tell you the legend earlier, you would not have had this difficulty."

The phone rang. It was Western Union informing Remo that his aunt Mildred would be arriving at 11 a.m. on Sunday. That meant that Remo was to call Smith at exactly 11 p.m. through the seven-digit code routed through Lexington, Kentucky, Bismarck, North Dakota, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania before reaching the phone on the desk at Folcroft Sanitarium.

"For Pete's sake," Remo said, hanging up the phone.

"For the emperor's sake," Chiun corrected. "You should not refer to the mad emperor who pays tribute to the Master of Sinanju as 'Pete.' "

"If s just an expression, meaning Smitty's gone on a code rampage again. Aunt Mildred. Nuts."

"It is only logical that the crazed emperor's family would also be crazed. These things are hereditary."

Remo picked up the phone, then put it down again. "Chiun, are we allotted only one dream a lifetime?"

"Would you care to repeat the experience?"

"No."

"Then one dream is enough."

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"What was yours about? The dream you had when you were fifteen?"

Chiun looked up at him, his wispy eyebrows arched. "That is a highly personal matter," he said.

"It is? There was nothing personal in my dream."

"Your dream did not bring you shame, thanks to my keen direction."

"You? Shamed? That's a laugh."

"Highly shamed." Chiun's features took on a look of profound suffering. "In my dream I was informed that in the golden years of my life I would be forced to train a white meat eater to take my place as Master."

"That doesn't sound like any Dream of Death to me."

"That is because you are incapable of dying of

shame."

Remo dialed the Fojcroft number direct. The ring was answered with a surprised "Hello?"

"What's up?" Remo said.

He could hear Smith sputtering at the other end of the line. "It's ten-thirty-one," the bitter, lemony voice snapped. "And what about Aunt Mildred?"

"She told me to give you a message that she left town to become a rock music groupie."

"Very funny. Since you can't keep a secure line, you'll have to meet me at code point a-three-oh-one-five-two." Smith pronounced the code number slowly and precisely. "Repeat, a-three-oh-one-five-two."

"Get off it, Smitty. You know I don't follow your paranoid codes. Tell me in English."

Smith worded his answer carefully. "Where you were sent once before, en route to an encounter two states west with a bald-headed man."

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Remo scoured his brain. Then it came to him. "Texas?" Remo groused. "Come on. We're in Portland, Oregon. Can't you make it someplace closer?"

Smith exhaled a little gust of air into the telephone. "Make that a-four-one-six-oh-eight," he said quickly. "Look it up in the code book." He hung up.

Cursing, Remo tossed open the telephone directory in the motel room. It was a complex code. The beginning letter indicated the letter of the alphabet under which the location's name would begin. The five numbers following had to be matched to five numbers in the directory. Since Smith had every telephone directory in the country on file in his computer banks in Folcroft, the code could change every time Remo changed location, with little chance it would be detected. Remo's finger slid down the interminable column of numbers under the "A" listing. When he reached 416-0852, he stopped. The first digits matched Smith's code. He moved his finger to the left, to the name "Addison, Charles H." The location was Addison airport. Remo threw the directory on the floor with a crash.

"Where are we going?" Chiun asked.

Texas," Remo said.

At two A.M. in February, Addison Airport in Galway, Texas, was the bleakest spot Remo could imagine. When the twin-engine Cessna 310 deposited its lone passenger on the otherwise deserted runway, Remo knew why Smith had chosen this as their meeting place. It was because this was the one spot on earth where Smitty looked completely at home.

The lemon-faced man in the gray overcoat, gray wool scarf, gray ten-year-old fedora, and black ga-

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loshes walked briskly past Remo and Chiun, to a battered pickup truck. He entered and drove away.

Remo rolled his eyes. "Smitty makes the KGB look like gossips," he said.

"Emperors are always addicted to secrecy."

"Who's going to see us here?" Around them, the freezing Texas wind roared through the deserted airfield. Far, far in the distance, a dim light glowed from the watchman's gate.

They walked over to a late-model pink Cadillac that was sitting where its owner had left it. With a fast three-finger drill on the locking mechanism, Remo jammed it open and got in. Outside, Chiun waited, whistling an old Korean folk tune, his orange robe fluttering in the wind. Remo got out and opened the passenger door. "Excuse me, Little Father, but I thought you would open the door yourself."

"The Master of Sinanju is not a doorman," Chiun said, getting in the car.

Remo went back around to the driver's side and got in. Deftly, he manipulated the wiring, and the car hummed to a start and sped silently out of the airport.

"Right or left?" Remo asked as they approached the road. "Which way'd he go?"

"Right, idiot."

"How do you know?"

"All white men, when given a choice between right and left, veer right. It is an advantage we of the East have had for centuries."

"We of the East? You including me?"

"Contain your false if eager pridefulness, o brainless one. 'We' could have referred to any of two billion Oriental persons."

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"It could have, but it didn't. Admit it, Chiun. You slipped."

The compliment put Remo in a good mood. He hummed as he gunned the Cadillac down the winding Texas road. The name of the tune he was humming was "Disco Lady." He could not recall where he had picked it up, but he remembered some of the words, and sang them:

Disco Lady

Won't you be my baby? Girl, you got me crazy Disco La—

"Halt!" Chiun thundered.

Remo skidded the car to a stop, causing it to swirl in an elaborate loop and careen off the road into a ditch of frozen mud.

"What is it?" Remo whispered, his eyes straining to pierce the darkness miles away.

"It is that revolting melody, with its equally repugnant message."

"Damn it, I drove off the road!" Remo yelled. He got out to look at the damage. "We'll have to Hit it out," he said. "It's too deep to push."

"We?" Chiun asked, his hands on his hips.

As Remo was hoisting the two-ton Cadillac back onto the road, the battered pickup truck with Smith at the wheel reappeared, coming from the other direction. The passenger door opened. "Get in," Smith said, his face looking more lemony than usual.

Smith drove silently to a small cabin off the main road and unlocked the door. When Remo and Chiun entered, he was taking off his galoshes. He lit

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a candle, then removed his hat, coat, and wool scarf. Beneath them he was wearing the three-piece gray suit he had worn every day since Remo had first met him. Sitting at the candlelit kitchen table in the cabin, Smith looked exactly as if he were at his desk in Folcroft Sanitarium.