Warren Murphy: Chained Reaction

"All right," Remo called.

She peered around the edge of the wall. The two guards were at the end of the hallway, lying in a crumpled pile. Their hands were still inside their jackets, still reaching for their guns.

Remo answered the unspoken question in Ruby's eyes.

"Slow, slow," he said. "They were slow. And slow is the second worst sin, next to sloppy."

"He knows we're here," said Ruby.

She pointed up toward the ceiling. In the triple junction of the two walls and the ceiling was a closed circuit television camera, with a red light on under the lens. There was another at the other end of the hallway.

"Good," said Remo. "He'll have time to pray." He looked up to the camera, pointed to it as if to say "you" then put his hands in the steeple position of praying.

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Behind the guards, a large curving .staircase led to the mansion's second floor.

In the back of the building they found De-Pauw's suite of offices. In the outside office was a small man in a neat brown suit, with a graying crew cut, and a face that looked as if it had spent the weekend at a convention of vampire bats.

As the three came into the room, he stared at them in total horror. Ruby saw on his desk a television monitor that flashed from scene to scene from the cameras around the house. He had seen Remo and Chiun enter downstairs. He had seen the guards reach for their guns, and shout for them to stop. He had seen Ruby duck back behind the wall. But he had not seen Remo and Chiun move. He had not even seen the blur of speed. Instead, he had simply seen Chiun and Remo reappear at the other end of the hall as if by magic and he had seen the two guards drop, their hands still reaching for their guns.

"Where is he?" asked Remo.

The man was not about to argue. He pointed to a heavy wooden door.

"In there," he said. "But the door's locked from the inside. I heard Mr. DePauw bolt it."

"Yeah, right," said Remo.

As Ruby watched, Remo tossed himself at the door. He should have bounced off like a tennis ball rebounding from a brick wall. But when his shoulder hit against the door, he seemed to cling there, off his feet, pressed against the wood, and Ruby heard the ripping sound of lumber as the door broke loose and swung open smoothly.

Remo winked at her. "Don't tell anybody how I did that," he said. "It's a secret."

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"A secret how he does it without denting his head," Chiun said.

DePauw's inner office was empty. But as they stepped into the room, a mechanical voice spoke out.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"Come out, come out wherever you are," said Remo.

Chiun pointed toward a high shelf of books. The sound had come from a speaker hidden there.

Remo moved to the back windows of the office, past a desk that was filled with advertising proofs. Ruby glanced at the stack. Each ad bore the S-L-A-V-E slogan at the end and her quick glance showed clearly the design of the advertising program. It was a carefully calculated orchestration, starting with the promise of a solution to America's unrest, moving into a massive march on Washington, and ultimately to a national referendum on "Security for Blacks, Safety for Whites." Bleech's army up in Gettysburg had been trained to fight, but if DePauw's mind-bending program worked, not a shot would be fired, and Bleech's troops would merely lead fifty million people toward Washington, D.C. to force a vote on the slavery referendum.

The amplifed voice spoke again in the office. "Who are you?"

Remo gestured Chiun to the windows. Below, they could see Baisley DePauw on the back of the power boat, its motors running, a microphone in his hand.

Chiun nodded. There was a stairway leading down to the ground from the back of the office.

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Remo whispered to Ruby. "You stay here and talk to him. We're going after him."

"What should I say?"

"You've never had any shortage of words before," Remo said. "Yell at him. Pretend he's me."

Chiun and Remo went back out through the front office door. Ruby realized if they went down the rear stairs, DePauw would see them and power off in the boat before they could reach him.

"We came to sign up," Ruby said aloud in the office. She was surprised how her voice echoed off the wood walls.

"Sign up for what?" DePauw answered. On the boat below, she saw DePauw looking up at the office windows and she moved toward the corner of the window so she would not be recognizable.

"The movement," she said. "It's just what we need. What gave you the idea?" Keep him talking, she thought.

"We appreciate all the support we can get. But exactly who are you ?"

Ruby saw two flashes pass along the side of the house and out onto the bright sunlit lawn leading to the dock. Remo and Chiun were on the pier, and then they were leaping onto the boat.

"We're the people who gonna bury you, you crazy honkey shit," Ruby shouted in savage triumph, then flung open the window and started down the back staircase.

When she got to the dock, DePauw was sitting in a folding chair on the teakwood back deck of the boat. Chiun was casting off lines and Remo was trying to figure out how to make the boat go forward.

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DePauw looked at Ruby with undisguised loathing as she lightly hopped aboard the boat.

She smiled and chucked him under the chin with a finger.

"This the way it happens," she said. "First we moves into your boat, then your neighborhood, and before you know it the whole country be shot to hell."

With a lurch, Remo finally got the boat moving forward and it spun out into the warm blue waters of the Atlantic. After five minutes of running at top speed, he cut the engines back to idle and let the boat drift gently on the small hillocks of wave water.

When he came back to the deck, DePauw had his arms folded across the chest of his natty blue pin-striped suit.

"I want to see badges," he said to Remo. "Let's start with you." He started to rise from his chair, but Remo put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into place.

"We don't have badges," Remo said.

"Then just who the hell do you think you are, marching onto my boat like this, taking over, holding me prisoner?"

"Is there somehow some difference between what we're doing," asked Ruby, "and what you did to those men in your cellar?"

DePauw started to respond, then closed his mouth tightly and set his jaw.

"I'll tell you then," Ruby said. "There's one difference. You deserve it."

"You'd better take me back before you get into real trouble."

"Sorry," said Remo. "Since you people landed

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the first slaves, your family's been sucking up off America, fattening up on other people's work. Today the bill conies due."

Chiun had been staring back at the southern Florida coastline. He turned and said, "You are stupid, stupid. Sinanju, which deserves them, does not keep slaves. What therefore gives you the right?"

"Some people are fit only to be slaves," De-Pauw said. "Now that's enough talk. I want my lawyer."

"You won't need him," Remo said. "The verdict's in. For every crime that your family has ever committed against people, for two-hundred years, you're guilty. And there's no appeal of the sentence."

"That's against the law," DePauw sputtered.

"Only American law," Remo said.

DePauw looked to Chiun. The old Oriental shook his head.

"Not against Korean law," he said.

In desperation, DePauw looked to Ruby.

"Ain't against mine neither," she said. "Everybody know we lawless beasts."

In the corner of the boat, Remo ripped the anchor chain loose from its cleat, and dragged the anchor back toward DePauw who watched him in horror.

"I want a trial," DePauw said.

"You don't need one," Remo said. "You're getting justice."

He pulled DePauw to his feet. DePauw was bigger than Remo and he struggled to free himself, but Remo ignored the struggling and began wrapping the inch-thick anchor chain around his