Warren Murphy - Assassins Play Off

If that had been Smith's pulse rate, he would have rushed to a cardiologist. But Smith, who read his medical bulletins on CURE personnel like a financier read the stock market tables, knew that for Remo a pulse of forty-eight was in the normal range.

"Remo," he said.

Remo's eyes opened slowly.

"Can you walk?" Smith asked. "We've got to get out of here."

"Hi, Smitty. Keep an eye on the paper clips. Every time you turn your back, someone's stealing them."

"Remo, you've got to get up."

"Get up. Right. Got to get up. Can't go lying down on government time."

He closed his eyes again.

Smith put his left arm under Remo's thighs and his right arm across the top of Remo's right arm and under his back and hoisted Remo into his arms. He was surprised, despite himself, at how light Remo was. He had weighed two hundred pounds when the organization had found him ten years ago, and Smith had known that his weight had come down some forty pounds, but like all gradual weight losses it had not been visible.

Leaning backward to counteract Remo's weight in his arms, Dr. Smith descended the steps to the first floor. Every time he reached his foot down to touch a new step, the slight jar to his body brought a squint of pain into the corner's of Remo's closed eyes.

In the kitchen, Smith deposited Remo into a chair at the kitchen table, then went outside to start the car's motor and drive it up as close as he could to the kitchen door.

He opened the passenger's door. When he got back into the kitchen, Remo's eyes were open.

"Hi, Smitty. Took you long enough to get here."

"Yes."

"I must have called you hours ago and here you are, taking your time about things, while I'm feeling rotten."

"Yes," said Smith.

"How'd I get to the kitchen?" asked Remo.

"You probably walked," said Smith. "Just as you're going to walk to that car outside."

"I can't walk, Smitty."

"Hobble then. You don't think I'm going to carry you, do you?"

"Not you, Smitty. That's laborers' work. Do you WASPS go to a school where you learn to be obnoxious?"

"When you finish feeling sorry for yourself, I'll be out in the car," Smith said coldly. "I suggest you hurry up."

Smith waited in the car, an unusual feeling of disquiet within him. He wished that he could have told Remo he was concerned about him, but he did not know how. Years of training, years of service, years of administration in that strange government underworld where a man who was your friend for years one day just stopped coming around, vanished, swallowed up, gone, and no one ever spoke of him again, as if he had never existed in the first place.

It was just too long-standing a tradition for Smith to be able to violate.

He watched as Remo came out onto the small kitchen porch. He tried first to hold onto the stair railing with his right hand, but he winced and gave that up. He put his right hip against the railing, then hopped down a step, landing on his left foot. Then he leaned sideways, right hip against the railing, until he was balanced and ready for his next lunge down.

Remo made it, hopping, to the car, and slid in through the open door. Smith reached across him, pulled the door shut, and backed carefully out of the driveway. He drove as quickly as the speed laws of New Jersey permitted, out of the town, onto Route 4, heading for the George Washington Bridge.

Only when he was on the highway did he ask Remo what had happened.

"There was a girl in the upstairs bedroom…"

"I saw her."

"Right. She disabled my right leg."

"And your arms?"

"Shoulders, Smitty. Two other guys did that."

"But how?" asked Smith. "I thought you were trained to stop that sort of thing from happening."

"Suicide attacks," said Remo. "Anyway, I need something."

"Yes. A doctor," said Smith.

"I need a submarine."

"What?"

"A sub. I'm going to Sinanju."

"Why? Remember, you're supposed to be checking out the death of one of our programmers."

"Remember the blows he suffered that mashed his joints?"

"Yes."

"I've had three of them so far. The fourth is due in Sinanju."

"I don't understand," said Smith.

And because Remo did not understand either, did not know how he knew what he knew, he said, "You don't have to. But Chiun is in danger and I've got to go to Sinanju."

"What good are you going to be to him? You can't even walk."

"I'll think of something. I'd rather be near him."

Smith drove on mechanically, not distinctively enough to be called good driver or bad driver.

A few minutes later, he said:

"Sorry, Remo, you can't go. I can't allow it."

"I'll pay for the gas myself, Smitty."

"Chiun is different," Smith explained. "He's a Korean. But you're an American. If you're captured in North Korea by the government there, it can cause an international incident. Not to mention blowing our whole apparatus. We'll have to close down."

"And what do you think you'll have to do if the New York Times gets a letter tomorrow listing locations, places, dates, killings, government interference? There was that business in Miami, remember? And the labor union. What will happen to you then?" asked Remo.

Smith drove on glumly.

"That's blackmail," he said.

"Company policy."

"Extortion," said Smith.

"Company policy."

"A naked unprincipled threat," said Smith.

"That's the biz, sweetheart," said Remo.

Smith pulled off the highway at a motel outside White Plains and, with a key from a ring in his pocket, opened the door of a room the organization rented year-round. He helped Remo into the room, located in the back of the building, secure from the street, helped Remo onto the bed, then left. He was back in twenty-five minutes with a man in a business suit, carrying a leather medical bag.

The doctor examined Remo carefully.

Remo would not cooperate. "I don't need all this," he told Smith in a hiss. "Chiun can fix me up."

The doctor called Smith into a corner of the room for consultation.

"This man belongs in a hospital," he said softly. "Both shoulders are separated. The major muscles in the right thigh are actually ripped. The pain must be excruciating. Frankly, Doctor, I think you overstepped yourself by removing him from the scene of the accident. He should have been carried by ambulance from the wreck."

Smith nodded as if he agreed with the lecture. "Patch him up as best you can until I convince him to get to the hospital, please."

The doctor nodded.

Despite Remo's total lack of enthusiasm, he bandaged Remo's shoulders, restricting his arm movements even further, but guaranteeing that the separated muscles would have time to knit before being abused. He also bandaged Remo's right thigh heavily. His last act was to reach into his bag and withdraw a hypodermic syringe.

"I'm going to give you something for the pain," he said.

Remo shook his head. "No, you're not."

"But the pain must be terrible. This will just help to relieve it."

"No needles," said Remo. "Smitty, remember that hamburger that put me in the hospital? No needles. No drugs in the system."

Smith looked at the doctor and shook his head. "He'll deal with the pain, doctor. No injections."

Smith escorted the doctor to the door and outside on the walkway thanked him for his assistance.

"Don't mention it," said the doctor, who had not come willingly, but only because his hospital director had told him if he did not go on this case he might find someday that he had trouble in obtaining his specialty licenses. The medical director of the hospital had said this because he had been advised that it would be beneficial in the ongoing review of his income tax returns to make sure that a doctor was available for a motel call, in exactly three minutes.