Warren Murphy: Terror Squad

Remo turned from the television set in disgust as the demonstrators spotted a camera on them and broke into an organized chant:

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

People's wars won't go away.

Chiun smiled. "Something intrudes upon your sense of order?" he said.

"Sometimes it seems we spend all our time trying to protect our country...."

"Your country," Chiun interjected.

"My country from nit-nats. The politicians won't let us build new jails, but how about one big asylum? That'd end most of our social problems."

"It would only start them," Chiun said. "I remember once, many years ago...."

"No, Chiun, not again," Remo said. "I'm filled up to here with typhoons, and with fat, and thin and dead animals, and dogs that bark and dogs that bite, and I just don't need anymore."

"Have it your own way," Chiun said mildly, returning his gaze to the television. "I suppose we must go out there today In the midst of all those lowlifes."

"Yes," Remo said, "and we've got to leave soon. Somebody's going to make an assassination try on the delegates; we've got to stop it"

"I see you have not reconsidered your dismissal by Dr. Smith."

"We both know, Chiun, that that doesn't work. I'm in this for life, whether Smith likes it or not."

"A strange kind of loyalty in which one disobeys him employer?"

"My employer is the United States," Remo said, "not Dr. Harold W. Smith."

Chiun shrugged. "I must have slept through the referendum in which two hundred million people expressed their confidence in you."

"It wasn't necessary."

"Those two hundred million people do not even know you exist," Chiun said. "Dr. Smith does; he pays your salary; you report to him; therefore he is your employer."

"Have it your own way. After this is over, we'll file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board." Remo tumbled into a one-hand hand-stand against the far wall, and called upside down to Chiun: "C'mon. We've got to limber up."

"You limber up. I will watch and make comments."

But Chiun was silent as Remo went through almost an hour of gymnastics around the living room floor. Finally, he stopped and said: "Time to go. What makes it worse is that Smith is going to be skulking around, probably with six hundred agents. We've got to be careful we don't knock off any of his men."

"It will be easy," Chiun said. "Be on the lookout for the men wearing trench coats and carrying knives in their teeth." He allowed himself a smile, as he followed Remo to the door.

He watched Remo's smooth glide approach to the door, and again he worried. Not for himself, but for Remo because the force against them was powerful enough to kill the young American who would one day be Master of Sinanju. And Remo should recognize that force, but he did not. Yet, if Chiun should tell him, Remo's mistaken pride would force him to go onward, exposing himself to danger. As painful as it was, he must wait for Remo to find out himself.

"Do you never wonder who is behind all this terrorism?" Chiun asked Remo.

"I don't have to wonder," Remo said. "I know."

"Oh?"

"Yes," Remo said. "It's the dog who barks but sometimes bites, who will bite fat but prefers thin and who waits at the place of the dead animals for PUFF, the magic dragon."

"Let us hope he does not wait for you. Because while we protect these men today, nothing will be changed unless the one responsible for this is destroyed."

"That's next," Remo said.

Chiun shook his head sadly and moved into the doorway. "It can never be next. It must always be now."

Remo started to answer but was interrupted by the telephone behind him.

As Chiun waited at the doorway, Remo stepped back into the apartment to answer the call.

A girl's voice said, breathlessly, "Remo, you've got to come. This has all gotten out of hand."

"Joan," Remo said. "Where are you?"

"At the place of the dead animals. At the Mu . . ."

And the phone went dead.

Remo looked at the receiver for a moment, then slowly replaced it. It was the face-to-face he'd wanted. But where? And how? He turned to Chiun who saw the look of puzzlement on Remo's face, and said gently: "It will come to you. It has been planned that way."

Remo just stared at him.

On the other side and at the other end of town, Joan Hacker hung up the phone with a self-satisfied smile.

"How did I do?" she asked.

"Magnificently, my revolutionary flower." The man who spoke was small and yellow-skinned. him voice was even and placid.

"Then you think I fooled him?"

"No, my dear, of course you did not fool him. But that does not matter. He will come. He will come."

Remo and Chiun began the long walk uptown toward the United Nations Building. Remo tried to rebuild the girl's words in him mind; twice he bumped into people on the street; twice Chiun clucked disapprovingly.

They slowed down slightly as they heard the happy shouts of children playing in a playground. Remo turned to watch. A set of boy-girl twins were at the top of a large fibreglass slide. It was shaped like a brontosaurus, that biggest, fattest of prehistoric dinosaurs, and Remo noticed for the first time how perfectly its smooth sloping back had been designed for use as a slide. He smiled absently to himself, then looked again. Something about the shape of the slide; it was familiar; he had seen that shape in just that way before. Then it hit him-where Joan Hacker had called from, the place of the dead animals. And, for the first time, it also came to him who was behind the terrorists. Who it had to be.

He stopped and put his hand on Chiun's shoulder.

"Chiun," he said. "I know."

"And now you go?"

Remo nodded. "You have to go on and protect the delegates to the conference."

Chiun nodded. "As you will. But remember, care. Yours is the dog that bites; the ones I seek only bark."

Remo squeezed Chiun's' shoulder and Chiun averted his eyes at the rare display of affection. "Don't worry. Little Father. I'll bring back victory in my teeth."

Chiun raised his eyes to meet Remo's. "The last time the two of you met, I told you he was five years better than you," Chiun said. "I was wrong. You are equal now."

"Only equal?" Remo asked.

"Equal may be good enough," Chiun said, "because he has fears that you do not have. Go, now."

Remo turned and moved away from Chiun, quickly, melting and disappearing into the early-morning work-bound crowd. Chiun watched him go, then said a silent prayer to himself. There were so many things that Remo must yet learn, and yet one could not coddle the next Master of Sinanju.

Around the corner, Remo looked down the street. Every cab he saw had at least one head, and sometimes two in the back seat. Waiting for an empty might take forever.

He moved to the comer and when one cab slowed to pass workmen who were digging up the street, he grabbed the door handle, pulled the door open and slipped into the back seat, onto the lap of a young woman carrying a model's hat bag. She was beautiful, placid and serene and she said:

"Hey, creep. Wotsa mattuh witcha?"

"It's good to know your beauty's not just skin deep," Remo said, as he leaned across her, opened the door on her side, and pushed her out into the street.

He slammed the door again and said: "Museum of Natural History and step on it"

From the driver's seat, P. Worthington Rosenbaum started to protest. Then, in the rear-view mirror, he caught a glimpse of Remo's eyes, and decided to say nothing.

Remo sat back and thought of the Museum, which he had last visited on a bus trip from the Newark orphanage where he'd grown up. The square blocks of buildings. The floor after floor of exhibits. The glass cases showing different forms of life in their native habitat. And the room where the dinosaurs were. The brontosaurus with the playground-slide back. Tyrannosaurus with his foot-long teeth. Exact skeletal reproductions of the animals as they had been when they lived.