Remo The Adventure Begins (11 page)

What McCleary had done most recently was to raid the AR-60 files and verify what Smith had suspected: they had used the secrecy of the HARP system, namely its multitudes of electronic defenses, to shield all their operations at Grove.

McCleary had found the parameters of the blocks by trying to get into HARP, and then all Smith had to do was send them back into the Grove system, and let the Grove teckies (technologists) think they were repairing an access problem. They would simply show Smith how to get in without ever knowing they were doing it. Then Smith would make access to the AR-60 available to the proper Army sections or the General Accounting Office that made sure Americans got what they paid for.

Smith waited as the warning filled the screen with information as to who was looking for what and how much they knew. Looking in on this world, safe from detection but able to influence events, was almost like playing God, he thought. And as soon as the thought became conscious, he pushed it from his mind.

The good Lord was always sure of what he was doing. Smith only hoped he knew. He didn’t try to stop the search for McCleary. That would only create an information block and as soon as someone discovered the wall was there, they would figure out how to scale it, break it, or get around it some other way.

So one did not block, one redirected. Smith sent in a security clearance for McCleary with McCleary’s face and prints, under the name Mel Bergman, computer engineer, Grove Industries, Grove, Idaho, on special assignment Taiwan.

Then he created a payroll record for Mr. Bergman, including complaints about withholding. He created a system for Mr. Bergman that would enable Grove and the FBI to chase him for months, and then declare him missing.

This job finished, Smith phoned McCleary.

“I’d like to see you in the shop,” he said. He had reached McCleary’s apartment.

“Does it have to be now?” asked McCleary.

“Yes,” said Smith.

Smith heard a woman’s groan through the receiver.

“Does it have to be now? I have met the one woman who stands me on end. I have never in my life been so moved. And I have never met someone who is so intelligent, and kind and courageous, weak when she should be weak, and strong when she should be strong.”

“Will it be long?”

“As long as I can make it.”

“Well, make it quick,” said Smith. “I don’t suppose you could be here in a half-hour?”

“Something important?”

“I think we might be in danger. Nothing firm yet. Something I want to talk to you about.”

“I’ll be right over.”

“What about your woman?”

“I’ll return her to the bar I met her in twenty minutes ago,” said McCleary.

There was a scream of indignation on the other end, but McCleary was at the “shop” within twenty minutes.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Grove Industries,” said Smith.

“I got what you wanted right on those little floppy disks you had designed so that they could pass through security and not be destroyed.”

“I didn’t design them. The CIA designed them. Con, how many penetrations have you done?”

“For work?”

“Yes, work,” said Smith, realizing he should have let McCleary finish what he was doing with the woman. It would be on his mind all day.

“A hundred. A hundred and twenty. It’s not really something difficult with all the really valid identification you can get for me.”

“And how many did you have to flee from because they saw through what was going on?”

“Two,” said McCleary.

“And how many were able to mount a search for you right within the United States government itself?”

“None,” said McCleary.

“One,” said Smith.

“Grove?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that only shows how well protected they are from spies. We should like that in a defense industry.”

“Except when they seem to defend themselves too well. They got to the CIA, McCleary. That’s closer to you than anyone has gotten before.”

“Anyone remember me?”

“No, you were a small Far East branch. I made sure all of those who knew you by face, sound and walk stayed in the Far East.”

“Those were the only friends I had.”

“Those were your drinking buddies. You didn’t have any friends,” said Smith.

“I know,” said McCleary. “But when it comes to these things, you should be allowing a man to lie to himself.”

Smith understood the loneliness of it very well. This man, who would have preferred to spend a life pleasantly over a beer in a bar, chose instead to defend his country. McCleary, unlike Smith, was the sort who did need friends. He just didn’t happen to have accumulated any since high school.

“I’m worried,” said Smith.

He wore his three-piece gray suit and sat on a stiff-backed chair before a computer terminal. McCleary wore an open shirt showing a gold chain on a hairy chest, and loose gray pants. He lounged against a computer storage unit.

“You think they are going to come after us?” asked McCleary.

“I think we might be needing the new man sooner than we expected. With Grove we sent in General Accounting. We sent in Army comptrollers. We even isolated a major in the Pentagon and fed her enough information to get her on the case. But nothing has worked so far. The only one able to get into Grove Industries’ books is Grove Industries. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“What about me? I got in.”

“You were our last resort. And now they may be coming after us. What is the situation with Remo?”

McCleary shook his head. “I don’t know. I think there might be some trouble there.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. That’s what’s wrong. Every day until two days ago, I heard one complaint per twenty-four-hour period from Chiun about Remo. Every day. Now nothing.”

“Which means?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the training was too hard. This isn’t karate Remo is getting. It’s not a martial art. It’s Sinanju. These bastards run across thirty-story buildings. These assassins have survived three thousand years because they are not too tolerant of mistakes.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if a Master of Sinanju ever failed, he felt his entire village would starve. So the training is not designed to give someone a colored belt. If it succeeds, the man knows Sinanju. But if it fails, well, another failure and you go on to the next candidate. It’s life and death from the very beginning.”

“You think Remo may be dead.”

“I haven’t heard a complaint from Chiun for the last two days.”

“Well, maybe you ought to find out.”

“Yeah,” said McCleary. “Except you don’t just call up a Master of Sinanju and ask if he’s killed the pupil you stood on your head to get for him.”

“What do you do?”

“You wait until he phones with another complaint.”

“Call him,” said Smith.

The Master of Sinanju was approached in an extraordinary manner at a most unfortunate time. The Lawsons’ son, Jim, had survived the operation, only to find out that while he couldn’t play football anymore as an all-American, he did have a fantastic talent as an interior designer. Yet to become an interior designer meant endangering his love affair with Jill Anderson, who had escaped Mafia threats to become the only addict of a special drug meant originally to cure her grandfather’s rare case of leukemia.

It was, of course, the grandest art form of the west, a surprising respite from the drone of this civilization. It was the one meager pleasure Chiun allowed himself.

And the phone call came before the advertisements for the washing products.

Chiun, of course, did not answer it, and made sure its ringing would stop. He wondered why the Americans did not stop all telephones while this art was in progress. Of course great art, like great assassins, was not always appreciated.

On the other end Con McCleary heard the phone go dead.

He cursed under his breath. He wondered whether he should take a gun. He probably wouldn’t be much better than Remo with a gun. Therefore, a gun would be useless.

Throughout the far reaches of Asia, legends of the Sinanju assassins maintained that the Masters never failed. To McCleary’s mind, this meant that no one lived to tell of their failures. Maybe they protected the reputation of Sinanju by burying their mistakes, six feet under. Maybe an emperor they failed never woke up some morning.

Would it be important enough for them to kill a client? McCleary thought about that. Of course it would. What else did a centuries-old house of assassins have but its reputation? How did he hear of them? The legends of perfection.

Remo was a bit of a wise-ass. Maybe he made one wise-guy remark too many.

Con McCleary thought about these things as he drove to the training house on the West Side, the large barn of an industrial building with a brownstone facade. He found a parking spot immediately, and he was disappointed. He would happily have driven around another hour looking for a spot. It would have meant another hour of breathing.

“Time to find out what’s what, laddie,” McCleary told himself in a voice so clear it might have been to another passenger. But the words he did not mouth were, “Time to die.”

At least it would be quick if it happened. The Masters of Sinanju did not waste time with cruelty. They were too perfect for that. They might lead people to believe they were cruel, but only to reinforce the legend in people’s minds.

That was the most important lesson one Master had taught to Ivan the Terrible, the especially brutal Russian czar. And that was one of the references that had convinced Smitty to try Sinanju.

In the early years of Czar Ivan’s reign, a French noble recorded in his diary that the czar told him of a magnificent house of assassins that could do anything. By the time the name reached the French language it was Seinajuif. But the location was clear. This was the village on the West Korea Bay, and what the noble recorded in French was that Czar Ivan had said:

“These Masters understand things we will never know. Things we blunder through, they dance through. They even understand the wildest acts and what they mean. For example, they say that the place for cruelty is not on the victim, because the victim will ultimately be dead. In that case it serves no purpose at all. Where it matters is in the minds of others. It matters that the living think you will be cruel. But cruelty, they say, is a wasted stroke, an imperfect move. An unnecessary thing.”

Thus the quote secondhand that McCleary reminded himself of as he entered the training house. The simple translation was that he was going to die quick if he were going to die.

He entered the brownstone and climbed up a flight of steps.

The door opened as though it had never been on a hinge. Chiun stood there, the bright day from the skylight filling the whole room. He wore a green kimono with flowers.

“Hello,” said McCleary.

Chiun did not answer.

“I called before.”

Chiun still did not answer.

“I bring greetings from Smith . . . Emperor Smith . . . He sends you greetings.”

Chiun nodded.

“May I come in?”

“There is more you have to say?”

“Yes. More.”

“And it was so important that you carelessly sent messages to me at the most inopportune time?” Chiun’s squeaky voice quivered with rage.

McCleary looked for Remo. There was no sign of him. Was that blood at the far end of the room? Or was it an old stain? McCleary couldn’t tell.

Chiun stepped back, beckoning McCleary to enter. McCleary stepped into the room leaving the door open behind him. Chiun pointed an imperious long fingernail at the rubble of what once had been a telephone.

“Fix that,” said Chiun.

“We’ll get you another,” said McCleary. Where was Remo? The door shut. He looked behind him. No one was there. Could Chiun will a door shut? McCleary glanced up to the high rafters near the skylights. Where was Remo? He focused on the smells of the training room. Dust. No lingering odor of a death. Even more strange, where was the smell of sweat? Didn’t these people sweat? If there was no sweat, there was no exercise.

McCleary noticed Chiun was just staring at him. Saying nothing.

“We will get you another,” said McCleary.

“I don’t want another,” said Chiun. “I want it fixed. Another will be broken. Fix it so that it does not ring during your daytime dramas.”

“He means soap operas,” boomed Remo’s voice. It came from a place behind McCleary.

McCleary turned around. Remo wasn’t there.

“Remo?”

McCleary heard Remo’s chuckle.

“Did you teach him to disappear?” McCleary asked Chiun.

“Can you do that with the phones?” asked Chiun.

“Yeah. Sure sure. We’ll get a television schedule and we’ll do it. Glad to do it. Done. We’ll do it. Where’s Remo?”

“Playing,” said Chiun.

McCleary felt a slap at the back of his head. He turned, swinging a fist. There was nothing there. Another slap. Another swing, and on the last swing he saw, in the farthest peripheral vision of his leading eye, gray slacks.

“Eeeah, failure,” said Chiun. “You move like a pregnant yak. Your pig feet stumble across the floor. He saw you. You lost concentration.”

“He didn’t see me,” said Remo, now standing quite casually within McCleary’s vision.

“You were inside the room right behind me all the time and you moved with me,” said McCleary.

“Nah,” said Remo. “I was outside and saw you park the car, and followed you up the steps. You walked like you were afraid. Were you afraid? Sometimes I can’t tell. I try to tell. Chiun says you can tell. I don’t know.”

“A little,” said McCleary. “So everything is going all right.”

“All right?” asked Chiun. He gave a little sarcastic laugh. Chiun turned from both of them. Sadly, he walked into the other room, and McCleary could see him opening one of the many steamer trunks.

“You were great, Remo. I didn’t know you were there at all. I didn’t suspect it,” said McCleary.

“Not that good. Not that good a test.”

“What do you mean? I’m an old CIA hand from Southeast Asia. I am one of the best tests in the world. You were just a cop.”