Warren Murphy: King's Curse

"Good for him," said Remo. "So you don't know where they went?"

"No," said Valerie. "Are you going to untie me?"

"I'm going to sleep on it," Remo said.

"They went to the Edgemont Mansion in Englewood, wherever that is," Chiun said softly without turning from the television.

"How do you know that?" Remo asked.

"I heard them, of course. How else would I know that? Be quiet now."

"Englewood's in New Jersey," Remo said.

"Then you will probably still find it there," Chiun said. "Silence."

"Finish it up," Remo said. "Then put on your tape machine. You're coming with me."

"Of course. Order me around."

"Why not? It's all your fault," said Remo.

Chiun refused to answer. He fastened his gaze onto the small color television screen.

Remo went to the telephone. His first call to the private line in Smith's office drew a screeching whistle that indicated he had dialed wrong. After two more tries resulted in the same response, he decided the telephone had been disconnected.

On a chance, he called a private number that rang on the desk of Smith's secretary in his outer office.

The telephone rang eight times before it was picked up and the familiar voice answered.

"Hello?"

"Smitty, how are you?"

"Remo--"

Remo saw Valerie watching him. "Just a minute," he said.

He picked up Valerie by her still-bound legs.

"What are you doing, swine?"

"Quiet," said Remo. He put her in a clothes closet and shut the door.

"Bitch. Bastard. Rotten bastard," she yelled, but the heavy door muffled the noise and Remo nodded with satisfaction as he picked up the telephone.

"Yeah, Smitty, sorry."

"Anything to report?" Smith asked.

"Just for once," Remo said, "couldn't you say something pleasant? Like 'hello' and 'how are you'? Couldn't you do that just for once?"

"Hello, Remo. How are you?"

"I don't want to talk to you," Remo said. "I just decided I don't want you to be my friend."

"All right, then," said Smith. "With that out of the way, have you anything to report?"

"Yes. The girl Bobbi Delpheen has been grabbed by those Indians."

"Where did this happen?"

"In my hotel room."

"And you let it happen?"

"I wasn't here."

"And Chiun?" asked Smith.

"He was busy. He was turning on his television set."

"Wonderful," said Smith dryly. "Everything's coming down around our ears, and I'm dealing with an absentee and a soap opera freak."

"Yeah, well, just calm yourself down. As it happens, we have a lead. A very good lead, and now I don't think I'm going to tell you about it."

"Now or never," said Smith and allowed himself a little chuckle that sounded like a bubble escaping from a pan of boiling vinegar.

"What does that mean?"

"I've finished dismantling this place now. There are too many federal agents around and we're just too vulnerable. We're closing down for a while."

"How will I reach you?"

"I've told my wife we're going on vacation. We've found a little place near Seboomook Mountain in Maine. This will be the number there." He gave Remo a number which Remo remembered automatically by scratching it into the varnish of the table with his right thumbnail.

"Do you have it?"

"I've got it," Remo said.

"It's odd for you to remember something first try," Smith said.

"I didn't call so you could bitch about my memory."

"No, of course not." Smith seemed to want to say more, but no more words came.

"How long are you going to be up there?" Remo asked.

"I don't know," Smith said. "If it looks like people are getting too close and that the organization might be exposed, well… we might just stay there."

Smith spoke slowly, almost offhandedly, but Remo knew what he meant. If Smith and his wife "stayed there," it would be because dead men did not move, and Smith would choose death before risking exposure of the secret organization to which he had devoted more than ten years.

Remo wondered if he would ever be able to look forward to death with Smith's calmness, a calmness born of knowing he had done his job well.

Remo said, "I don't want you staying up there too long. You may get to like the idea of vacations. You might retire."

"Would it bother you?"

"Who'd pay off my expense accounts? My Texaco card?"

"Remo, what is that noise?"

"That's Valerie," Remo said. "She's in a closet, don't worry about her."

"She's the woman from the museum?"

"Right. Don't worry about her. When are you going to Maine?"

"I was just leaving."

"Have fun. If you want to know where the skiing's good, I know a great guidebook."

"Oh, really?" said Smith.

"Right," said Remo. "It tells you all about the illimitable skills and the indomitable courage of the author. It tells you all about the politics of the downslope trade and rips the mask of hypocrisy off the faces of the ski resort owners."

"I'll be at Seboomook Mountain. How's the skiing there?"

"Who knows?" Remo said. "The book doesn't get into things like that."

After hanging up, Remo gave Valerie her choice of options. She could go with them to the Edgemont Estate or she could stay tied up in the closet. If she were anyone else, there might have been a third option. She could be set free on the condition that she keep her mouth shut and not tell anybody anything.

He paused. Twice, he thought. Twice in five minutes he had worried about someone else's life. He savored the emotion before deciding he did not like it.

For her part, Valerie decided to go with Remo and Chiun, working on the assumption that she could never escape from a closet, but if she were outside with them, she might be able to slip away.

Or, at least, yell loud and long for a cop.

Jean Louis deJuin smoked a Gauloise cigarette in a long ebony filter that tried manfully but unsuccessfully to hide the fact that Gauloise cigarettes tasted like burned coffee grounds. He looked through the sheer draperies from the third floor window of the red brick mansion out onto the grounds between the building and the road beyond.

Uncle Carl stood alongside deJuin's red leather, high-backed chair and watched with him. DeJuin casually flicked ashes from his cigarette onto the highly polished wood parquet floors that had been set in place, individual piece by individual piece, back in a day when wood was something that craftsmen used, and not just a temporary stop on the road to the discovery of plastic.

"It was too bad about Reddington," Uncle Carl said.

DeJuin shrugged. "It was not unpredictable; still it was worth the attempt. Today we try again. All we need is one of those two men, and from him we can learn the secrets of the organization he works for. Do we have people looking through their rooms?"

"Yes, Jean Louis. As soon as they left, our men went up to look through the rooms. They will call if they find anything."

"Good. And the computers in Paris are analyzing the various capacities of American computer systems. If that secret organization is, as it must be, tied tightly into a computer system, our own computers will tell us where."

He looked up at Carl and smiled. "So there is nothing to do but enjoy the day's sport."

DeJuin snuffed his cigarette out on the floor and leaned forward to look through the open window. Three stories below him, twelve-foot-high hedges crisscrossed each other at sharp right angles, in the form of a geometric maze covering almost an acre.

Eliot Jansen Edgemont, who built the estate, had been an eccentric who made a fortune out of jokes and games, and during the twenties, half of America's families had owned one Edgemont game or another, back in the days before America had been mesmerized into thinking that sitting next to each other and sharing a communal stare at the photoelectric tube constituted a rich and full family life.