Warren Murphy: Assassins Play Off

"I see. Do you often take vacations alone?"

"Sometimes."

"Oh. When was your last vacation alone?"

"In 1962, sir."

"You were a bachelor then, weren't you?"

"Yes. If you must know, sir, I'm having trouble with my wife and I just want to get away from her. I've got to get away for a little while."

"Do you think your work will suffer if you don't?" asked Smith.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I see no reason why you shouldn't get a rest. Let's say at the end of the month."

"Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome, Ashley. You're a good man."

Bill Ashley smiled when he shook hands, for how would Smith know if he were a good man or an atrocious misfit? Peculiar fellow, that Smith, with his fear of the sun. The only other one-way windows Ashley knew of were at the Langley headquarters of the CIA and Washington headquarters of NSA.

With the Smith formality taken care of, Ashley put in the proper forms to his real boss in Washington. The answer was yes.

As was custom, he was taken off sensitive matters right away and just did garbage work waiting for his vacation. On the day before departure he transferred his savings account into his checking account. He would have liked to have given Mr. Winch the cash directly, but if his real boss got word—and they had people who would give them the word—that Ashley had withdrawn $8,000 from his savings in cash just before his vacation out of the country, there would be more government people around him than ants on a piece of sugar. He was sure Mr. Winch would take a check. He would have to. That's all Ashley had.

"Brandy snifter," said Mr. Winch when Ashley was shown into the coldest heated room this side of outdoors—the lord's chambers of Kildonan, it was called—"you must first wait until your check clears. A check is a promise of money. It is not money."

When the check did clear, Ashley quickly wished it hadn't, so badly did his back and arms hurt from waiting in the position of respect on the cold wooden floor. And for $20,000 he wasn't even getting a private lesson. There were three others in the class.

They were a bit younger than Ashley and a bit more athletic and much more advanced. Mr. Winch made Ashley watch. Their strokes seemed familiar, yet much simpler. The circling motions were much tighter than Ashley had seen anywhere else, not so much a fixed circle but the forcing of a turn around an opponent.

"You see, Mr. Ashley, you were trained to practice you circling motions around an imaginary point," Winch explained. "Your method was learned from someone a long time ago who watched this method in practice, probably against someone who didn't move. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. That is because it is derivative. All the derivative arts have their flaws because they copy the externals without understanding the essence. And there are other reasons. Witness the kung fu masters who attempted to fight Thai boxers. Not one survived the first round. Why?"

Just to relieve the building pressure on his back from the fixed position, Ashley raised a hand. Mr. Winch nodded.

"Because they had not been trained to fight but to pretend to fight," said Ashley.

"Very good," said Mr. Winch. "But more importantly, the boxers were hard men winnowed from the soft. The boxers had used their skills for their living. The boxers were at work; the kung fu at play. Up, Ashley, on your feet. Assume a position."

"Which position, Mr. Winch?"

"Any position, brandy snifter. Stand or crouch or hide. You'd be better off with a gun, probably, and perhaps two hundred yards distance. That is, if you had a gun, which I wouldn't give you."

"What am I supposed to be learning?"

"That a fool and his life are soon parted." Mr. Winch clapped his hands and a large, blond, crewcut man, with a hard face and ice blue eyes and hands with knuckles meshed together, danced forward and came into Bill Ashley hard. He also came fast. Ashley didn't see the blow, and he knew he had been hit only when he tried to move his left arm. It wouldn't.

The next man, a big bear of muscle and hair, giggled as he took out Ashley's right arm. It felt as if his shoulders had two hot knives attached to them, and suddenly Bill Ashley realized he needed his arms for balance. It was very hard to stand, and then it was even harder when the left leg went and he was down on the floor writhing and moaning his agony, after the third trainee had delivered the leg blow.

And then the right leg went when Mr. Winch immobilized it with a disdainful kick.

Ashley screamed when they took off his white gi. The bones must be broken, he thought. This was wrong. You didn't break someone's bones in training. That was wrong training. He saw a rice paper banner flutter from the ceiling, and he knew by the cold at his back that someone was opening a window. It was not his imagination. It was getting colder. He knew his clothing was off, but he could not look. His head had to stay exactly where it was or his joints felt incredible pain, as if someone were shredding his ligaments with a rasp.

He saw the banner on the ceiling float down, a lopsided upside-down trapezoid with a vertical line through it. A simple symbol he had never seen before.

"Why? Why? Why?" moaned bill Ashley, softly, for loud talk made his arms move slightly.

"Because you work at Folcroft, brandy snifter," he heard Mr. Winch say. It was too painful to turn his head to look at Winch.

"Then it wasn't for my money."

"Of course it was for your money."

"But Folcroft?"

"It was because of Folcroft, too. But money is always nice, brandy snifter. You have been poorly taught. From your very hello to the world, you have been coming to this day because you were poorly taught. Goodbye, brandy snifter, you were never made for the martial arts."

There was one blessing to the chill that overcame his bare body on the new wooden floor in the lord's chambers of Kildonan Castle. It was going to make everything better. Already, his pain was numbing and soon it would all be gone. The temperature fell further at night and Ashley slipped into a deep darkness, only to be disappointed by weak light in the morning. But when the room was most light, about the time of the high sun, Ashley slipped again into the deep darkness, and this time he did not come out.

He was found six days later by a detective from Scotland Yard acting on a tip from a telephone caller who would later be described as having a "vaguely Oriental" voice.

The yard also got Ashley's New York State, U.S.A., driver's license in the mail without a note.

Since it was addressed to the detective who got the tip, he assumed the body belonged to William Ashley, 38, 855 Pleasant Lane, Rye, N.Y., five-feet-ten, 170 pounds, brown eyes, brown hair, mole on left hand, no corrective lenses.

It not only checked out, it became known as the "Kildonan Castle Murder," and the detective appeared on the telly describing the gruesomeness of the death and how the yard was looking for a madman.

Ashley had died of exposure, not of the broken limbs, each shattered at the joint, he said. No, there were no clues. But the murder scene was horrid. Frightfully horrid. Yes, he could be quoted on that. Frightfully horrid. Never seen anything like it before.

It was when he had finished his second daily press briefing that the man from British Intelligence had all those questions.

"Did this Ashley fellow take long to die?"

"Yessir. He died of exposure."

"Were any papers found on him?"

"No sir. The bloke was stark raving nude. Exposure will kill faster than thirst or hunger."

"Yes, we're well aware of that. Was there any indication that he was tortured for information?"

"Well, sir, leaving a person with four crushed limbs naked on a bare, cold floor in a drafty highland castle is not exactly a comfort-inducing experience, wouldn't you say, sir?"