Warren Murphy: Child's Play

"Well, that's ninety-nine to one."

"Granted," said Chiun. "Ninety-nine to your one that this Mr. Kaufmann is a dead man. His instinct to run was correct."

"How can you say that?"

"Do you know how the other safe ones were killed?"

"No, which is why I figure these safety measures make it fifty-fifty."

"If you have a bowl of rice, and if this bowl of rice is on the ground, and if someone steals the rice?"

"Yeah?" said Remo.

"What would you do?"

"I'd protect the rice."

"Ah, good. How?"

"Put a watchdog on it."

"And if the next day, the watchdog were killed?"

"Build a fence around it."

"And if the next day the rice was gone and the fence still there?"

"Camouflage the rice. I now have a fucking camouflaged bowl of rice with a leaky fence and a dead dog."

"And on the morrow that rice is gone also, what would you do?"

"Think of something else, obviously."

"And just as obviously that something else would fail."

"Not necessarily," said Remo.

"Yes, necessarily," said Chiun.

"How can you say that?"

"It is simple," said Chiun. "You cannot defend against what you do not know."

"Maybe that other thing would work. I know it's not the best odds, but it's not a certainty."

"Yes, a certainty," said Chiun. "There is no such thing as luck. Only beneficial things which people do not understand. That is the only luck."

"Then what about my good fortune in learning Sinanju?"

"A very simple answer," said Chiun, and Remo was sorry he had even mentioned this, for he knew what was coming, was certain of it when he saw the contented smile grace the delicate parched features of the Master of Sinanju.

"My decision to teach you, to make you Sinanju, can be explained simply," said Chiun. "Since a little child, I have always attempted to exceed these laws. Like attempting to transform a pale piece of a pig's ear into something worthy or making diamonds out of mud. You have heard it. I have admitted flaw. My choice of you."

"Well, then," said Remo, and his voice was a snarl, "you know, I've just about had enough of this crap. I'm as good as most previous masters except maybe you, and if you want to pack it in, then you know you can pack it in."

"Anger?" asked Chiun.

"Not anger. Go spit in a windstorm."

"Over a little jest, such hurt?"

"I'm a little bit tired of that dump you call a village in North Korea. I've seen it. If it were in America, they'd condemn the thing."

Chiun's smile descended.

"How typical to turn a little harmless jesting into vicious slander." And Chiun became silent and moved off to the other end of the compound. Remo waited by the fence. He tossed a whiffle ball with a few children, showing them how you could make it rise as well as drop, making it appear to stay motionless in the hot summer evening air. One of the MPs tried to imitate the trick and couldn't, even though he had once pitched for Tidewater in the International League. About 3:42 p.m., Remo heard two sharp taps, like a hammer hitting a nail into porcelain. He told the MPs to check on Kaufmann.

"What for?"

"I heard something," Remo said.

"I didn't hear anything," said the MP.

"Check," said Remo, and the way he said it seemed to indicate rank on his shoulder. It was something the MP just knew was to be done, not because of any visible rank but because of the man doing the ordering.

The MP rushed. Remo walked, although he knew what he would find. The two light taps were not something hitting, but small explosions of air. And he could not tell the MP that when your body was awake you felt sounds as well as heard them.

The living room guard was defending the cookies from an eleven-year-old girl who said Mr. Kaufmann always let her take seven oreos, and the guard answering that even if Mr. Kaufmann did let her take seven, which he sincerely doubted, he knew her mother wouldn't let her take seven and put six back. Now.

He came out of the kitchen when he heard them, but Remo and the other MP were up the stairs to Kaufmann's bedroom before he could ask what was going on.

They found Kaufmann sitting on the floor, his legs stretched in front of him, his hands at his sides. His shoulders were pressed against a picture that had been ripped from its hook above him on the wall. He had obviously leaned back against the picture, then slid to the floor, taking the picture with him. His eyes were closed. A reddish trickle worked its way down his flaming Bermuda shirt. The shoes jumped as though jolted by a small charge of electricity.

"Thank God he's alive," said the MP. "Must have fallen and cut himself."

"He's dead," said Remo.

"I just saw him move."

"That's just the body getting rid of the last energy it won't need anymore. It's the life force leaving."

Kaufmann, it was later determined, was killed by two .22 caliber bullets that entered under the chin and lodged in the brain. The special personnel from the Justice Department, the Caucasian called Remo and his Oriental colleague, were, as General Haupt put it in his report, unaccounted-for unindigenous personnel of now-questionable credentials.

It was in this heat of battle that Major General William Tassidy Haupt, showed how he had earned his stars and why his men had always called him "the safest damned general in the whole damned Army."

First, under the heavy artillery of Washington pressure, he set his emergency flanking moves. He immediately established a top-secret investigating commission with a young colonel at its head. This commission was to see where the lieutenant had failed. Like other great commanders, General Haupt had taken proper precautions before the action. Cunningly, he had gotten an MP detachment from Fort Dix, and in a daring move had stolen a march on the Fort Dix commander. The detachment from Fort Dix was the very detachment that was assigned to guard Kaufmann. Of this, General Haupt had said nothing, letting the MPs' orders come from the New Jersey post, secret and confidential to the lieutenant leading the detachment. Haupt's chief of staff did not at first understand this, but later, on the day Kaufmann was killed, this mysterious little bit of paperwork showed itself to be Haupt's true genius. For when Kaufmann was killed, Haupt moved with precision under fire. It was his colonel investigating the Fort Dix failure. Not only was Fort Bragg not charged with failure, it became the outfit that would assign blame.

He also showed flexibility, even while the attorney general was on the phone, a full cabinet member, coming on with everything he had. General Haupt launched his main attack, right into the teeth of official Washington.

"The last people seen with the subject, Kaufmann, were accredited by your department, Mr. Attorney General. I have the forms right here."

"What are you saying?"

"Perhaps Fort Dix was at fault. We don't know yet. I'm not going to hang a fellow Army officer when it appears that the Justice Department itself might have been responsible for Kaufmann's mishap. The Caucasian and the Oriental, who are now prime suspects, were your people."

Haupt's chief of staff gasped. A captain, who had just come from the Pentagon where one did not frontally assault any other agency, let alone a full cabinet member, lost the strength of his legs and had to be helped from the room. A staff sergeant stared dumbly ahead. No one saw his knuckles whitening.

Haupt held the phone without amplifying his statement, letting it run full and strong. The line to Washington was quiet. Haupt covered the mouthpiece of the phone.

"He's checking it out," said Haupt and winked at the captain. It was good to show the troops a bit of levity under fire. It quieted them down and steeled their nerves.

"I think you're right," said the attorney general. "It wasn't normal channels but those two did have Justice Department clearance. We're checking it out now." Haupt had put the telephone on loudspeaker so his staff could listen in.