Warren Murphy: Brain Drain

Wanda hmphhed. "You don't even know what dead is. Dead is when you have to wait for a seat in a restaurant. Dead is when they change their private numbers and you don't get them without asking. Dead is when suddenly everybody has a case of the outsies when you call. That's dead, honey. What do you know about dead? This town is all dead. There's just a few that stay alive and I'm going to be one of them. Gordons is going to help."

"You've got it wrong," Remo said. "Dead is when the flesh starts to turn black and becomes a banquet table for maggots. Dead is arms and legs ripped off and stuck in a wall. Dead is brains scooped out of skulls that look as if they were crushed by a steam-shovel. Dead is blood and broken bones and organs that don't work. Dead is dead. And Gordons will help you do that, too."

"Are you threatening me, lover?" asked Wanda, looking into Remo's deep brown eyes that bordered on black and never imagining for an instant that Remo would kill her if he decided it would help stifle his next annoying yawn. He did not like this woman.

Remo smiled.

"No threats." He stood up and touched Wanda's bangled wrist with his right fingers. He pressed lightly. He smiled again and his eyes narrowed slightly and he moved his fingers again, and when he left the office a few minutes later, he had Wanda's assurance that she would notify him as soon as she heard from Mr. Gordons-and he had a date for Chiun to meet with Rad Rex. Wanda, still sitting behind her desk, for the first time that day did not feel like having anything to eat.

CHAPTER TWELVE

"I saw them," Chiun said.

"Yeah. Well, that's not important now. Mr. Gordons in in town. I've found it out for sure."

"Wait," said Chiun, raising a long bony finger for silence. "Just who is to say that this is not important? Do you alone decide what is important? Is that the way things are to be? After all the time and trouble I have gone to to teach you to be a human being? Now you say 'that is not important'?"

Remo sighed. "Who did you see?"

"I did not say I saw a who. I said I saw them."

"Right. Them. Who's them? Or what's them, if you prefer."

"I saw Doris Day's dogs."

"Gee. Wow. No fooling."

Pleased at Remo's display of interest, Chiun said, "Yes, I saw them in the Beverly Hills. There were many of them. A woman was walking them."

"Was the woman Doris Day?"

"How would I know that? However, she was fair-haired and lissome, and it might have been she. It might have been. She moved like a dancer. It probably was Doris Day, Blonde. Lean. Yes, it was Doris Day. I saw Doris Day walking her dogs."

"I knew you'd see the stars if you took that bus ride."

"Yes, and I saw others. Many others."

Remo did not ask who, and Chiun did not volunteer any names.

"Are you all done now?" asked Remo.

"Yes. You may go on with your inconsequential report."

"Mr. Gordons is in town. We're his targets. And we've got a meeting with Rad Rex tomorrow. I figure that's when Gordons is coming after us."

"It is about time that you performed well some act of importance. When is it, this meeting?"

"At Global Studios. Five p.m."

"Five p.m.," said Chiun. "My bus ride for tomorrow is at four p.m. I will not be back in time."

"Then don't go."

"No. It is all right. I am accustomed to dealing with your ineptitude. I will take a different bus. It doesn't matter." He stopped in mid-sentence. Remo looked. Chiun was staring out the car window toward the sidewalk, where a group of pedestrians waited.

"Look, Remo. Isn't that…?"

"No," said Remo. "It isn't."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"You understand? He will attempt to find you?"

"Here now," said Wanda Reidel. "Of course I understand. Who's the creative one here anyway?"

"Sadly, it is true," Mr. Gordons said. "I am not creative. You are. Forgive my presumptions."

"Of course."

"You must be sure that he does not find you. Then release the information on the computer sheets that I gave you. The way we discussed. He will look for you and that will separate him from the Oriental, with whom I will deal. Then I will destroy this Remo. And you will have the publicity that you think is helpful to your career."

"I understand all that," said Wanda impatiently. "This Oriental must be quite a man."

"He is," Mr. Gordons agreed. "Most unusual. He has no fear and no weakness that I have been able to discern. However, with the element of surprise, I will be able to destroy him. I will now make the telephone call."

Gordons dialed the phone next to the pool at Wanda's home in Benedict Canyon, one of the strips running from Hollywood to the sea, gouges in the earth, as if a giant had scratched his fingers through soft sand. As Gordons dialed, Wanda lay back on her beach chair, eating a bagel, rubbing Nubody cream over her skin.

"Is this the one called Smith? This is Mr. Gordons."

Gordons listened for a moment, then said: "It will do you no good to know where I am. I am calling to tell you that the computer report on the secret organization you command will be made available to the press of your nation."

Pause.

"That is correct. This will be done today at five P.M. by Ms. Wanda Reidel in her office. She will announce plans for a new motion picture about your secret government organization. It will star Rad Rex."

Pause.

"That is quite accurate, one called Smith. I am going to use all the confusion this creates to destroy the one called Remo and the old Oriental. It is a good plan, is it not? Creative?"

He listened for a moment, then yelled "nigger" and slammed the receiver back on its base.

Wanda Reidel stopped examining her naked pubis. "What's wrong? What did he say?"

"He said I had the creativity of a night crawler."

Wanda laughed, and Mr. Gordons glared at her.

"I would take that laughter to be mocking me if it were not for the fact that I require your services."

"Don't ever forget it, Gordons. Without me, you're nothing. I made you what you are today."

"Incorrect. The scientist at the space laboratories made me what I am today. You are trying to improve upon her work. That is all. I am leaving now, for there are things to do before I encounter the old one at five o'clock today."

And with a smooth gait, inhuman in its absolute uniformity, Gordons walked away, leaving Wanda at poolside. She was still there five minutes later when the telephone rang.

"Hello, love," she said.

"This is Remo. I thought you were going to tell me when you heard from Gordons. What's all this crap about a new movie?"

"It's true. All true."

"Why are you doing this?" said Remo.

"Because Gordons wants me to. And because I want to. It'll make me a household name. Everybody in this industry, television too, they'll be knocking down my door when this breaks. I'll be the…" She stopped and said, "Five o'clock today. At my office. And don't try to talk me out of it, because you can't. See you, love. Kiss, kiss."

She replaced the receiver with one outstretched finger. Remo hung up the phone at the Sportsmen's Lodge.

"Chiun, you're going to have to go see Rad Rex by yourself."

"I am old enough to travel alone."

"It's not the travel. There'll be a studio car. But I won't be able to go. And Mr. Gordons has figured out a way to separate us."

"See," said Chiun. "It is as I have always said. Even bad machines sometimes do good deeds."

"Oh, go scratch. I hope he eats you. Turns you into engine oil."

"Not before I see Rad Rex. To think after all these years."

"The car'll come for you. I've got to go. To Wanda Reidel's. I'll catch up to you."

"Take your time," said Chiun. "I should have some moments of rest during the day."

Unless they were familiar ones, limousines meant absolutely nothing to Joe Gallagher, a day-shift guard at the front gate of Global Studios.