Warren Murphy - Voodoo Die

Very strange, thought Corazon. "All right," he said. "Is there anything else?"

"That will do for now," said Chiun.

Remo pulled on the sleeve of his robe.

"Chiun, you forgot the woman. Ruby what's her name."

"And one thing more," Chiun told Corazon. "In one of your prisons, you have a woman."

"Lot of times, we have the woman in the prisons," said Corazon.

"This is an American woman named Ruby. She must be set free."

"You got it. Anything else?"

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"Remo, anything else?" "The machine, Chiun," Remo reminded him. "And one thing more," said Chiun. "We want your machine. Our President said this was very important, to get your machine."

''Wonderful," Corazon said, beaming. His magic machine was kept at the prison under guard. To show his good will and his honesty and his loyalty to America and all the things it meant to him, he would meet Remo and Chiun at the prison. He would free the woman. And he would give them the machine. He was tired of it, anyway. He explained this loudly to an aide whom he ordered, "Get a car for these two wonderful Americans and do it quick or your ass be in the frying pan, boy."

"It be in front soon," Corazon told Remo and Chiun after the aide had left. He looked at the two men shrewdly. "I like you two."

"It is allowed," Chiun said. Remo sniffed. "You two pretty hot stuff, too," said Corazon. "You do some job on Russians and like that. I never saw anything like that." Chiun nodded.

"I think now that I got relations again with the United States I gonna ask your President, let you two stay here. You help me train my men and they be best anticommunist fighters in all the Caribbean and those enslavers of the human mind never gain no foothold here in Baqia."

"We work only for the President of the United States," said Chiun. "Actually, this one . . ." He pointed to Remo. "He takes his orders from some underling, but I work directly for the President and it is

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well-known that we of Sinanju find loyalty more important than mere wealth. So we must refuse your offer."

Corazon nodded sadly. He understood loyalty and morality and honesty. He had heard about them once.

Remo leaned toward Chiun. "Since when, Little Father? Since when all this loyalty to the United States? Since when have you stopped -trying to promote side jobs?"

"Shhh," said Chiun. "I just told him that. There is no point in working for this one. He won't pay. I can tell. Look at the cheap furniture in this room."

The aide returned to announce, "The car is ready, Generalissimo."

Corazon rose from his gilt throne chair. "You two go ahead. The driver will know where to take you. I will meet you there, just to make sure that this Ruby is freed and that my men give you the machine, the way you want the machine. Because I want only the friendship and the relations between our countries."

Wordlessly, Chiun turned and walked toward the door. He said to Remo, "I don't trust this one."

"Neither do I," Remo said. "I've heard these love-America speeches before."

"I don't think we're ever going to get clean towels," said Chiun.

Corazon stood near the corner of the window, peering through the crack between the drape and the window frame. As soon as he saw Remo and Chiun's car pull away for the drive to the prison, he hollered for his aide to get his helicopter ready in the palace courtyard. Then he rolled the mung machine out from behind a curtain and toward the door to the elevator which would take it to the helicopter pad.

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A half hour later, Remo and Chiun's car parked outside the open prison gates. They walked up to where Corazon stood by his helicopter.

"My men are getting the machine," he said. "The prisoner is in there." He pointed to a door in, the corner of U-shaped central courtyard. "Here is the key to the cell."

Remo took the key. "I'll go get her," he told Chiun.

"I will go with you. For some reason, this Ruby person is important to my employer and so I want everything to go smoothly, to show them that if they give their assignments to someone who knows how to perform them competently, they will get satisfaction and full worth for their gold. That is the way of Sinanju."

"It's also the way of Sears Roebuck," Remo said testily. "Come along if you want to."

They went through the wooden door and were in a dark dank hallway. At the bottom of a flight of steps, a cell door, with bars set into it at eye level, faced them.

"I will wait here," said Chiun.

"You trust me to go down that flight of steps all by myself?" Remo asked.

"Just barely," Chiun said.

Inside her cell, Ruby Jackson Gonzalez tucked into her waistband the gun the sergeant of guards had given her. She heard the footsteps on the stairs. That would probably be the lieutenant on his way down for his promised assault on her.

When the sergeant had given her the gun, Ruby had told him what to do.

"Tell that lieutenant I wouldn't have any of you," she said. "Tell him like I got the hots for him."

"He never believe," the sergeant said. "He is a most

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ugly man. How could he believe you reject me for him?

"Here," Ruby said. She flicked out a sharp index fingernail and dug a furrow down the sergeant's cheek. The little gap first filled up with blood and then a red trickle curled down his cheek.

The sergeant slapped his hand to his cheek. He looked at it when it came away red, then glared at Ruby.

"Bitch," he snarled.

He took a step toward her but Ruby smiled, a wide white smile that knew everything in the world.

"Hey, my honey," she said. "Now he believe you. That little scratch prove it. And when I get him, then you gonna be the lieutenant. New uniform, more money, you gonna be dashing. You have all the women you want. With that seventy-three million, you be bad."

He wanned to her smile.

"You, too?" he asked.

"I be the first and the best. And I see you messing with any other women, I take your head off," she said.

The smile wrung all the threat out of Ruby's words and forced a return smile from the guard.

"I bet you would," he said.

"You better bet," she said. "You too good-looking to let out loose." She stepped forward and blotted the guard's face with a handkerchief from his shirt pocket. She left a faint dried trail of blood on his cheek.

"There. Now you tell him and he believe you."

The sergeant nodded and left. Now Ruby heard the steps coming down the worn stone stairs. It should be the lieutenant but these didn't sound like the lieu-

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tenant's feet. He wore heavy boots and liked to clomp around, trying to frighten people. But these footsteps were light and even, almost like a cat's pads.

She thought maybe the lieutenant already had taken his boots off, preparatory to spending the rest of the day in Ruby's bed.

"Sheeit," she said to herself.

She stood behind the door as the key opened it and the heavy door slowly swung open. She put her hand on the butt of the revolver, underneath her long white man-tailored shirt.

The door creaked to a stop. She heard a voice, distinctly an American's voice.

"Ruby?" the voice called.

It wasn't the lieutenant.

Ruby took her hand off the revolver and stepped out from behind the door. Her eyes met Remo's.

"Who you?" she asked.

"I've come to get you out."

"You from the CIA?" she asked.

"Well, something like that."

"Go 'way, dodo. You gonna mess me up around here," Ruby said.

"Hey, have I got the right place?" Remo said. "This is a jail and you're a prisoner and I've come to get you out."

"And if you from the CIA, you gonna mess everything up and we all get killed. If I get outa here on my own, I know I'm gonna get outa here. I let you take me outa here, I figure we all be shot before we goes twenty feet."