Warren Murphy: Voodoo Die

"I talking, Yankee. I don't like Yankee and I don't like yellow Yankee most of all."

"My trunk has been dropped," said Chiun.

"You talking Baqian captain. You show respect. You bow."

The Master of Sinanju folded his long fingers into his kimono. His voice was sweet.

"What a great tragedy," he said, "that there are not more people here to listen to your beautiful voice."

"What?" said the captain suspiciously.

"Let me punch that old gook in his face, yes?" asked the porter. The porter was twenty-two, with a fine young black face and the solid healthy gait of one who regularly exercised his body. He was 18 inches taller than Chiun and towered above the captain, also. He put two of his massive hands on either side of the green lacquered trunk and lifted it above his head. "I crush the yellow Yankee, yes?"

"Wait," said the captain, his hand on his bulging .45-caliber pistol on his belt. "What you mean, yellow man, that I sing nice?"

"Very nicely," said Chiun, his voice as sweet as a nightingale. "You will this day sing 'God Bless America' and mean it so profoundly that all will say your voice is as sweet as lark's whisper."

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"I choke on me tongue first, yellow man," spat the captain.

"No," said Chiun. "You choke on your tongue later."

There was a bit of delicacy required in this. The green trunk held tapes of American daytime television dramas and they might not have been packed that solidly. They had to come down gently from above the porter's head, where he still held the trunk, so with a smooth and constant rhythm Chiun's hands flashed out and closed on the left knee of the porter and then the right. It looked as if the old parchment hands were warming the knees. The captain waited for the porter to drop the trunk and crush the fool.

But then the captain saw the porter's knees do what he had never before seen knees do. There were the shoes. There were the shins and the knees just seemed to sink inside the pants down into the shoes-and the porter was eighteen inches shorter. And then the waist seemed to collapse and the old Oriental in the kimono moved around the porter like a peeling machine and a look of horror was on the porter's face, his mouth opening to scream but the lungs were a . mess just beneath his throat and the trunk teetered on the top of his head momentarily, but then his chin was on the runway and his hands were stretched out lifeless beneath it and, with one long fingernail, the Oriental was under the trunk, working the porter's head, until the green lacquer glittered above its blood and pulp base. The television tapes were safe.

The porter was not much more than a stain.

"God, He bless America," sang the captain, hoping the tune somewhat resembled the gringo song. He sure smiled big for his American friends.

"We all called Americans," laughed the captain.

Those are not the word to that great nation's song

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which has wisely chosen to employ the House of Sinanju, Remo will teach you the words. He knows American songs."

"I know some of them," Remo said. "What are the words?" begged the captain. "I dunno," said Remo. "Hum something." The captain, who always loved the United States with all his heart-he had a sister in the States and she loved America almost as much as he-ordered his company to make sure not one ounce of harm came to any of the trunks. He would shoot the first man who dropped one of the trunks. Personally he would do the shooting.

A corporal from Hosania Province, famous for the locals' laziness, complained about some dead and sticky meat underneath the green trunk on the runway.

The captain shot him through the head as an object lesson to all the soldiers in his command how neighbors should love each other and no one loved America more than the captain. Especially yellow Americans.

Eighty-five Baqian soldiers marched from the airport to the Astarse Hotel singing "God, He love America" to a conga beat. The fourteen trunks went atop their heads like some fat snake with shiny square parts.

The procession passed the presidential palace and went into the front door of the Astarse. "Best room in house," said the captain. "I'm sorry, captain. But all the rooms are filled." "Rooms, they never filled at the Astarse. We have tourist problem."

"They fill now, hey hey," said the clerk. "They got weapons upstairs you never see. They got "em big." And the clerk spread his arms. "They got 'em small."

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And the clerk closed two fingers together. "And they use 'em good. We lose three soldiers yesterday. Yes, we do."

"I work at airport," said the captain. "I hear trouble here, but I don't hear what kind."

"Sure. Them soldier fellas, they don't tell you, captain, so when there's an order to come here, dummy fellas like you, you come and get killed, fella. That's what you get, fella."

'The bastards," muttered the captain. He was thinking of his superior officers. They must have known. They were offering assignments to watch tourists at lower rates. A captain in the Baqian army, like other Spanish-speaking officers everywhere, no matter what their politics, engaged in rugged-individualism capitalism.

They believed so fiercely in the free market system they would put a banker to shame. It was an honored tradition, no worse in Baqia than anywhere else in the Caribbean. One paid for a commission in the army. That was an investment. As an officer, you used your rank to earn back the investment with a profit. Sometimes, if you were poor, you repaid with loyalty. You bought good assignments. An airport with its commerce was fairly good. But a tourist hotel with its prostitutes and illegal smuggling sales was a delight in the generals' eyes. The captain had known there was trouble because the price for a hotel assignment was going down.

He had thought it was worth the risk and was going to put in a bid for the job. But now this generous clerk had warned him. Generous? The captain had suspicious second thoughts.

"Why you tell me this?" asked the captain. He hoisted his belly up briefly, a notch above his gunbelt.

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"I don't want to be here when everybody tries to settle who has what room."

The captain rubbed his chin. This problem. He looked back at the delicate Oriental with the wisps of white hair. The captain smiled very broadly. He was not about to forget the porter, who was now a form of tapioca on the main runway of the International Airport. Then again, if a clerk gave something for nothing, there must be something horrible upstairs.

"I give you free information," confided the captain, "It is in return for your free information. You better give that nice little old yellow man a room."

"I will, senor captain, right now. But first evict its occupants. You might want to start with the Bulgarians on the second floor. They have the machine gun covering the hallway and they put sandbags around the walls of their room, and this morning when I complained because they didn't send the bellboy back and they had no right to keep him upstairs that long, because we shorthanded down here, they send me this."

The clerk took a hatbox from beneath the counter and, turning his head, removed the cover. The captain peered in. Wrapped in wax paper were severed human hands.

"You look at remains of bellboy."

"He must have been a wonderful bellboy," commiserated the captain.

"Why you say that?" asked the clerk.

"How much help has three hands?"

The clerk peered into the box. "And the second cook, too. I didn't even know. And the Bulgarians are the peaceful ones."

The clerk went down a list. There were Russians and Chinese, British, Cubans, Brazilians, Syrians, Is-

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raelis, South Africans, Nigerians, and Swedes. There were also fourteen free-lance adventurers. All of them there to try to steal Baqia's new weapon.