Warren Murphy: Missing Link

"They just took me all over the train," the agent said. "He's not in there."

"Shit," said the older agent. "Better call in for help."

"You know he's gonna turn up in some saloon, don't you?"

"Sure I do, but we've gotta call in anyway. You make sure those Arabs wait here and I'll call headquarters."

The radio phone was answered immediately in

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the Secret Service field office in Atlanta, Georgia.

"This is Gavone," the older agent said with the dry, bored, laconic voice usually affected by airline pilots whose planes were plunging nose-first into an ocean. "Got a little problem."

"What's that?" responded another dry voice.

"We think the Link is missing."

"Look under a porch someplace. He's probably sleeping one off."

"We looked," Gavone said. "He's gone. Better send help."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"Deadly serious. Hurry up, will you?"

"Shit," said the voice in Atlanta. "The Missing Link. Just what we need."

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CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and he was going to do something about pollution in America.

He stood on a hill looking down at three tall smokestacks that jutted up into the sky, puffing out wisps of thin white smoke. It was coal smoke, Remo knew, but it had been washed and filtered and processed until it was cleaner than the smoke from oil furnaces. The cleansing process had raised the price of using coal until it was higher than that of using oil bought from the Arabs. But it was all America had—high-priced oil or equally high-priced coal. Nuclear power was dead in the water. A small accident in which not one person was injured—no person had ever been injured in a nuclear accident in America—had been turned into the scare story of the century by the media, and by the time it was over, the drive toward nuclear power was scuttled. Remo thought it was sad that the country that had developed and pioneered nuclear power someday probably would be the only country in the industrial world not to use it. The marchers had won again.

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They were the same marchers who had welcomed the Vietcong victory in Vietnam and so weakened America's will that the United States pulled out of the Far East and let it be overrun by the communists. A long night of terror had descended over that part of the world. In Cambodia the illiteracy rate had reached 99 percent because everybody who could read or write had been murdered. It was a country with six doctors for six million people. Somehow, the marchers had nothing to say about that.

Remo had decided a long time before that America had lost more than face when it quit the war in Vietnam. It had lost America; it had lost its spirit. Formosa was given up, Iran was lost. In southern Africa, America had made it clear that the only government it would recognize would be a government made up of Communist terrorists—no matter how the people of that region voted. A college professor whose primary qualification was that she hated America had gone to Russia to receive an award from the Communists and said that all the talk about Soviet persecution of dissidents was a smokescreen to cover up America's persecution of dissidents. And then she had gone back to her publicly paid position on the faculty of a state-supported college.

So much pollution, Remo thought, as he looked down into the small valley at the five thousand people who were camped outside the fences of the small coal-burning electrical generation plant. He turned to the small Oriental next to him and said sadly, "Chiun, it's all over." "What is?" the Oriental said. He was only five

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feet tall, almost a foot shorter than Remo. He continued to look down at the crowd, the thin wisps of white beard and hair around his ears puffing occasionally in a stray breeze. "America," Remo said. "We're done." "Does this mean we are finally leaving to find work elsewhere?" Chium asked. He looked toward Remo who was still staring down at the crowd. "I have told you many times there is no shortage of countries that would be glad to have two premier assassins performing for them." Chiun's voice was high-pitched but strong, a voice that seemed too strong to come from a man who appeared to be eighty years old and frail. The old Oriental wore a bright white brocade kimono and despite the summer heat of Pennsylvania, he did not sweat.

"No," Remo said. "It does not mean that we are going to look for work elsewhere. It's just kind of sad that no matter what we do, America is shot."

"I have never understood this," Chium said. "You act as if America were something special, but it is not special. It is just another country. Think of the grandeur that was Greece, the glory that was Rome, gone in the mists of time. All that is left is men who dance with each other and women who cook spaghetti. Think of the pharaohs and then-empires. Think of the blond Macedonian. All gone. Should America be different?" "Yes," Remo said stubbornly. "You can explain why?"

"Because this country is free. All those other places you mentioned, there was no freedom. But here people are free. And we're being conquered from inside. We're being torn up by Americans."

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"That is the way it is with freedom," Chium said. "Give people freedom and many of them will use it to fight you."

"So what's the answer?" Remo asked. "Take away freedom?"

The wizened old man looked up at the sky before replying. A lone chicken hawk patrolled the bright white skies. "The House of Sinanju has been in many nations for many centuries," he said.

"I know," said Remo. "Please, no history lectures."

"All I wish to say was that this was the first country I had ever learned of which seemed to be run by caprice and whimsy. It is as if the tiniest minority runs this nation, and it is always that minority which hates the country most."

"I know that," Remo said. "So remove the freedom? That's the answer?

"No," Chiun said. "Remove the freedom and you will be conquered from outside. Keep the freedom and you will be destroyed from inside."

"So there's no hope," Remo said.

"None at all," Chiun said, "All nations die. The only tiling wrong with your nation's death is that it will be inglorious. Better to die before the sword than before the germ." He looked down again at the five thousand people lounging around before the electric company gates, a few of them shouting slogans and singing. "Take heart with one thing, though," he said.

"What's that?" Remo asked.

"Those germs down there. When this country gives way to whatever will follow it, be assured that they will be the first to go."

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Remo shook his head. "It all makes you feel hopeless."

"No, no," Chiun said quickly. "We have our art The fullness of our lives comes from within. It requires nothing else." "Except targets," Remo said. "That is true," Chiun said. "I stand corrected. Assassins need targets."

Suddenly Remo was angry and he waved his hand at the marchers milling around below and said, "There should be enough targets there to satisfy anyone."

"I will wait for you here," Chiun said. "Enjoy yourself. But restrain your anger."

"I will," Remo said as he moved quickly down the hill. This was the fifth day the electric plant had been shut down by the pickets who surrounded it. The demonstrators had also made a daily run at the fence surrounding the plant and each day had been held off by the beleaguered town and plant police. But this day was different, Remo had heard. He had gotten word from upstairs that guns and explosives had been shipped in to the demonstrators.

With the plant closed down, one hundred thousand families had been without electricity for five days. No refrigeration, no electric lights, no television and no radio. Hospitals were using emergency generators to perform major surgery and if any of those generators failed, people would die because there were no more backup systems.