Warren Murphy: Death Therapy

"Chiun says you can function below peak and work to it."

"Chiun says."

"Yes."

"What about what I say?"

"We'll talk about it tomorrow night. Goodbye."

Then the click of the phone. Remo gently removed the plastic and aluminium scrambler device and with his right hand slowly squeezed until the circuits began to pop under the cracking plastic. He kept on squeezing until what he held in his hand was a solid rod of crushed electronics.

Then he went to the next room where the television was on. Sitting two feet from the set, in a lotus position, was a frail wisp of an Oriental in robes, his white beard flowing from his parched face like the last strands of pale cotton candy.

He was watching Dr. Lawrence Walters, psychiatrist at large. Betty Hendon had just revealed to Dr. Walters that her mother was not really her mother, but her father posing as an upstairs maid in the house of Jeremy Bladford, the man she loved, but could never marry because of her teenage marriage to Wilfred Wyatt Homsby, the insane recluse billionaire, who was even now threatening to close down Dr. Walters' new clinic for the poor, "Chiun," yelled Remo. "You tell Smith I could function below peak?"

Chiun did not answer. His bony hands remained crossed in his lap.

"You wanna get me killed, Chiun? Is that what you want to do?"

The room was silent but for Dr. Walters' peroration on why it was important for people to accept themselves as people and not as others expected them to be.

"I'm gonna unplug that set, Chiun."

A slender finger with a delicately tapered nail of almost equal length rose to the old man's lips.

"Shhhh," said Chiun.

Fortunately, the fadeout organ music came on and an obnoxious child jumped on screen, breaking up her mother's card game to tell her about the state of her teeth. The mother seemed pleased. So did the other players, all of whom had four of a kind, and they demanded to know what dentifrice the child used.

"You need not be at peak all the time, any more than a car must drive at ninety miles an hour all the time."

"When a car's in a race, it helps to be able to move fast."

"Depending upon what or whom one is racing," Chiun said. "A car need not run fast to beat a turtle."

"And the whole world's my turtle?"

"The whole world is your turtle," Chiun said.

"But suppose I run into a very fast turtle?" Remo asked.

"Then you pay the final dues of our profession."

"Thanks. It's always a comfort having you around. I'm into an assignment by tomorrow night."

"Work the walls then," Chiun said. "And a word of caution, my son."

"Yeah?"

"Anger will destroy you faster than any turtle. Anger robs the mind of its eyes of reason. And you live by your mind. We are weaker than the buffalo and slower than the horse. Our nails are not so sharp as the lion's. But where we walk, we rule. The difference is our minds. Anger clouds our minds."

"Little father," interrupted Remo.

"Yes?"

"Blow it out your ears."

Remo turned from the sitting room, back into the bedroom, and began to work the walls, first running toward one, then bounding back, then toward another and bounding back, then off a wall in a corner and onto the adjacent wall, and back and forth, from wall to wall, building speed, until finally he was moving like a blindingly fast tapeworm, around the room, on the walls, his feet not touching the carpeted floor.

It was a good exercise. It was a good way to work off energy and anger, Remo thought. Chiun was right as he had always been right. The difference was the mind. Most men could use only a small percentage of their coordination and strength. At peak, Remo could use almost 50 per cent. And Chiun, elderly Chiun, the master of Sinanju, the trainer of Remo and the father Remo never had, could muster more than 75 per cent of his capabilities.

It was merely doing all the time what most men were capable of doing only in rare instances.

Remo waited for the caddy to plod his way back. He could not see the flag on the raised green, surrounded by the deep sand traps. The wind was moving left to right and the grass smelled deep and rich and good from the constant care. To the left of the fairway a few twigs cracked, as though crushed by a heavy animal. The noise came from a clump of trees bordered by hedges.

The caddy returned. He was breathing heavily and barely got out the words.

"Eight feet behind the lip of the green, just along the line of the sand trap. The green's fast and the grain is toward you. The green slopes away from you downhill."

The caddy made a slanted motion with his hand indicating the angle of slope.

"It's a hundred and seventy yards. The way you been shooting, you ought to take a pitching wedge."

And then Remo realized he had not been playing his game. In anger, he had just been shooting for score, instead of carefully placing the ball in a sand trap here or in the rough there, and intentionally putting for imaginary holes several feet from the real hole. He had been playing his best possible game and in front of a witness.

"You're something else, Mr. Donaldson," the caddy said using Remo's latest name.

"Give me the four iron."

"The way you been shooting, Mr. Donaldson? I've never seen anybody shoot like you."

"What are you talking about?" Remo asked casually.

"Well, eagle-eagle is a pretty good start."

"You must be hung over," Remo said, taking the four iron. "You're not awake yet. I got a bogey and a par. I know what I shot. What were you smoking last night?"

Remo set his feet very carefully and took two awkward backswings. Then he sliced a sweet curving shot 170 yards—70 yards forward and 100 yards into the next fairway.

"Damn," said Remo, throwing his club ahead of him in the plush fairway. "And I had a good game going."

The caddy blinked and Remo carefully watched his eyes to see if the caddy would forget those first two holes. The answer would be in his eyes.

But the eyes said nothing, because they were no longer there. A red gash splashed through them to his skull, and Remo had heard the whirring of the bullet before he heard the crack of the shot from the clump of trees bordering the fairway.

The shot spun the boy around, club bag spilling the irons and woods wildly onto the fairway. Remo ducked behind the spinning body, using it as a sandbag. When the boy hit the ground, Remo hit the ground simultaneously, flattening to the contours of the young man. Two more high-power slugs thwapped into the boy's body. No crossfire, Remo thought. He could tell by the heavy impact on the boy that whoever was in the clump of trees was using heavy stuff. Maybe a .357 Magnum. He was also zeroing in.

The boy's body jumped again. Whoever it was, was using a single shot rifle. And because of that he was going to die.

A pause, and the body thumped again. Remo was off. First fast, sideways without changing directions, a bullet behind him. Stop, slow roll to the right, letting the marksman overload. From right to left he moved, travelling the fairway like a pin-ball, closing the distance between himself and the sniper. And then he realized that there were three. A shot spit up mud at his feet, and then two men emerged from the bushes, one on each side of the rifleman, their faces blackened like commandoes, their uniforms dull green, their boots black and high and polished like paratroopers. They wore black stocking caps, and they came out wrong, moving one behind the other. The first man held a short machine pistol, inaccurate beyond forty yards.

The golf shoes were no help. Real speed was hindered by spikes. Change of direction came not from equipment but from within. The great football players like Gayle Sayers had it, doing things that seemed impossible. And they were impossible to the eyes that believed balance was a matter of footwork. The best sole for movement was the sole of his foot, and the spikes were slowing Remo down, as he angled to set the three men in a line so that only one could shoot at him at a time.