Warren Murphy: Terror Squad

Joan Hacker had tried to tell him yesterday when she told him he was a dinosaur. She had been trying to tip him, but he was too dumb to grasp it.

And the call today was another put-up job, to try to get him there.

Well, now, Remo had an edge. The man who was behind it all had wanted Remo to come; but he could not be sure that Remo was coming. Surprise might be on Remo's side.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

There was something wrong with the entire thing, Chiun thought, as he moved speedily, but not even seeming to move, through the crowd miffing around at the United Nations building.

There had been too much advertising of the attack upon the delegates to the antiterrorist conference. Too many people knew. Dr. Smith knew and in his present state that might mean that half the people in the United States government knew. Remo knew. Chiun knew. That poor, simple girl knew.

It was not the way the thing should have been done. For was it not one of the precepts of Sinanju that the ideal attack must be quiet, merciless and unexpected? And this one violated all those rules, but especially the most important one-being unexpected. If one wished to assassinate the delegates to an antiterrorist conference, one did not wait until they were assembled behind the protective screen of thousands of policemen and special agents and what have you. One assassinated them in their beds, upon planes, in taxicabs, in restaurants, all more or less upon a given signal. The Americans had a proverb for it too, although he thought it might have been Korean: do not put all your eggs in one basket.

Perhaps Chiun was guilty of error; might he be overestimating the quality of their opponent? He thought about this as he moved. No, he had not. Their student was himself an adept at the secrets of Sinanju. There was no way that he would move stupidly.

And yet there had been much seeming stupidity in everything done thus far.

Chiun put the question behind him as he moved closer to the entranceway to the U.N. building, sifting through policemen and guards and other people whose eyes lacked the power to fix upon him motion.

It was easy to see Smith's men. He and Remo had joked, but they were right Smith's men wore trench coats and hats with press cards in them, and carried cameras which they aimed at the crowds, without ever bothering to depress the shutters. And yes, there was Smith too, clad the same way, up on the steps of the building. Chiun shook him head. Oh well, he would be sure not to hit anyone wearing a trench coat.

Now-where would the attack on the delegates come from?

Deception was the keystone of everything that had been done so far. The attack would not be frontal. The assassins would be disguised.

Chiun looked around him. As newsmen? No, no one trusted newsmen, and policemen in emergency situations delighted in abusing them and demanding credentials. Perhaps as policemen? No, there were too many policemen who would have the opportunity to see through such disguises. As clergymen? No. There would be no reason for a group of clergymen to gather. Their presence alone would be suspicious,

Chiun looked around. Who could pass through the lines without question? Without the press interfering with them, without the police stopping them?

Of course.

He began to move toward the right edge of the plaza in front of the building's main entrance, toward a group of Army officers who were now moving resolutely through the crowd, through the police lines, toward the building. Chiun knew. The assassins had come as a military detail, and no one would question them, until it was too late.

It was adequate, Chiun told himself, but he still wondered why the attack was to be handled this way. It was defective in concept, and their opponent should have known better.

The front steps of the Museum of Natural History were sealed off by ropes with signs posted: closed today.

Remo went down the pedestrian ramp to the slightly below-ground first floor level. The door there was locked also and with the heel of his hand, he smashed out the locking mechanism so that the door opened easily. Behind him, in the taxicab, P. Worthington Rosenbaum wondered whether or not to call the police, then remembered the fifty dollar tip the man had given him, and decided that anything that happened at the museum was not the business of P. Worthington Rosenbaum.

Although it was summer, it was cool and dark in the building. Remo took a few steps forward across the highly polished marble floors into the central first floor reception hall. A long-ago memory told him that stairs were to the left and right of the passageway. In a small office on the corner of the first floor, a bearded young man sat, with a phone to his ear.

"He's here," he hissed.

He nodded as the voice came back: "Good. Follow him to the top floor. Then kill him."

"But suppose he doesn't go to the top floor?"

"He will. And when you are done with him, call me," the voice said, almost as an afterthought.

Remo moved to the stairs and started up. He would have to begin at the top floor; that reduced the chance of the prey escaping. It was one of the things Chiun had taught him.

On the top floor of the museum, the stairs led into a corridor at the end of which stood the dinosaur room. Remo moved into the room and looked around. There was brontosaurus, as he had remembered him as a child. He moved through the big, high gallery. There at the end was T. Rex, still evil and powerful looking although only a skeleton, towering high over Remo. This was the place. This entire building. The place of dead animals.

Remo heard a sound behind him and turned as the bearded youth came through the door corridor, clad all in black, wearing a black gi, a karate costume which in white is a formal attacking uniform, but in black is an affectation.

"Well, if it ain't the Cisco kid," Remo said.

The bearded man wasted no time. With a deep nimble of sound in him throat, he was in the air moving toward Remo, his leg tucked under him to unleash a kick, his right hand cocked high overhead to deliver a crushing hand mace.

The leap was long and high, right out of Nureyev. The conclusion was pure Buster Keaton. Before he could fire off a blow with either hand or foot,, his throat ran into Remo's up-thrust hand. The hardened heel buried itself deep in the man's Adam's apple. The bone and cartilage turned to mush under the hand and the man's leap stopped, as if he were a soft tomato plopping against a brick wall. He dropped heavily to the marble floor, without even a gasp or a groan.

So much for Cisco.

When the telephone had not rung in three hundred seconds, the small yellow man on the second floor smiled, and looked at Joan Hacker.

"He has breached our first line of defence," he said.

"You mean?"

"Our man in black is dead. Yes," the yellow man nodded.

"Why, that's terrible," Joan said. "How can you be so calm? That's just awful."

"Spoken like a true revolutionary. We capture airplanes and shoot hostages. Fine. We shoot unsuspecting athletes. Fine. We bring about the death of an innocent old butcher. Fine. We prepare this morning to kill a score of diplomats. Fine. But we should worry about the life of one high school dropout, whose karate technique was, to tell the truth, abysmal."

"Yes, but those other people are just . . . well, they're the enemy ... agents of reactionary Wall Street imperialism. And the man downstairs . . . well, he was our man."

"No, my dear," the yellow man said. "They are all the same. They are all men. No matter what label they bear, they are all men. Only the unthinking and the unmerciful label them as agents of this or that, and then only so that they can justify their own refusal to treat each of them as a man. It is a greater justice to kill a man, knowing full well that you are killing a man and not just ripping off a label. It gives meaning to that man's death and richness to one's own accomplishment."