Destroyer - Master's Challenge Part 12

like the most vulnerable parts of a computer. They entered through the unlocked gate, almost whistling with the casualness of it all.

All three saw the flash of the gun because light traveled faster than sound. But one of them did not hear the sound because a bullet reached his brain before his eardrums could send the message there.

Harold W. Smith had fired his gun again.

He shot again at the first fast movement of the two remaining. The slug hit one chest-center, dropping him. The last man threw up his hands in surrender.

The unlocked gate had led to a perfect blind ambush.

One man lay dead on the floor, the other dying, his heart pumping up a little fountain of blood, and Smith pointed his gun at the last one.

"You speak English?"

"s.h.i.t, yes. Don't shoot. For G.o.d's sakes, don't shoot."

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"I'm just following orders."

"Whose orders?" Smith asked.

"Theirs."

"Who ordered them?"

"1 don't know."

"Think," Smith suggested.

"I don't know."

Smith heard the terror in the voice. He did not like this dirty work. He did not like to see men afraid of him or dying, but he had spent much of his life doing things that he did not like, things that he knew he had to do.

He made an obvious motion of c.o.c.king the old pistol.

"With me," he said, "You're dead now. With your bosses back in the States, maybe you'll get lucky and live."

"We just get orders."

"From whom?"

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"Our leader. That's all. She phones."

"Dr. Pensoitte?" Smith asked.

"I don't know. Just a woman's voice."

"Are you paid or what?"

"No. Not paid. Money is evil. You can't be paid for being part of the earth. I don't want to die, mister."

"Neither does the president, but you men have tried twice to kill him."

"We follow orders," the youth said.

"How did you infiltrate the Secret Service?"

"I don't know what you mean," the man said.

"Why doesn't the Secret Service act when its computers pick up threats against the president?" Smith repeated.

"Oh," the young man said, his tone indicating he had an answer and thought he might use it to bargain with. Smith's steely gaze changed his mind. The man pointed to one of his dead companions. "Him, I guess. He was with the Secret Service, working with their computer system. He must have been able to jigger it up so it could ignore warnings or stuff.''

"Where is your group based?" Smith asked.

"The whole world's our home."

"Where did you get your training?" Smith asked.

"All over."

"Give me an address."

"Marigot," said the young man, and Smith knew it was the main French city on the island. "I live here."

Smith waved his pistol at the two other men. "Did they live here too?"

"No. They flew down for this job. I live with my father.''

"Is he part of it too?"

"No. He thinks we're crazy."

"You're very close to death, son. What do you think?"

"I think I'm scared," said the young man.

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"Get the bodies outside," Smith said.

Both were dead now, heads flopping, banging harmlessly on the volcanic rock floor of the entrance to the small cave. Smith helped move the bodies and realized what he was doing. He was encouraging the young man to make a run at him so he could shoot him quickly, so he didn't have to look at the terror and shoot its eyes out.

He realized he had always hated killing. It was easier to die, he thought, than to kill. The dead mind nothing. But he had no right to die now; he had no right to risk his life. There was a country he had to protect.

When the two bodies were out into the salt marshes, the young man said, "Okay?"

"Yes," Smith said.

The young man had a condominium just outside Marigot, the French capital city. It overlooked a stretch of pure sea water facing the very flat island of Anguilla. The sun set behind that island.

The apartment looked like a library for Eaith Goodness, Inc. There was a tract on why democracy was evil. The t.i.tle was "When the Gra.s.s Votes, then We'll Vote."

"What phone do you get your orders on?" Smith said. He knew St. Martin's communications system was primitive, and there might be a radio hookup to the telephone that he could trace.

The boy shrugged.

"The phone," Smith repeated. "They called you, you said."

"Well, kind of," said the young man, and his eyes flashed for just an instant. Smith whirled and fired at the same time. A large blond hulk of a man was lunging at him with a lead pipe. And all the training Smith had believed was gone with time came back in an instant. The shot entered the man's chest, and he fell forward, knock- 125.

ing Smith to the floor, dying on top of the CURE director, but Smith held onto the gun.

And from the floor, he pointed it up at the other young man's groin.

"Good-bye," he said. He c.o.c.ked the revolver.

"The Earth Goodness Society, Inc.," the young man said. "It's at 115 Pis...o...b..ach Drive, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Mizz Robin Feldmar, student advisor. I was one of her students at Du Lac College. So were those other two guys. Him too. That one on you. She always called me. I stay here with my dad."

"As 1 said," Smith repeated. "Good-bye."

He fired one shot and sent Daddy's little bundle of presidential a.s.sa.s.sin off on his first leg to an expensive cemetery somewhere in America.

By dawn, Smith was on a first-cla.s.s Eastern flight out of Julianna Airport on the Dutch side of the island, heading toward Minneapolis. If he could find the link between Dr. Pensoitte and that student advisor, he could work down from the top and end it all.

Did he want to find that link though?

He was an old man, and he was tired and he didn't care. He had killed again, and the death was on him, even though he had left his bloodied jacket and shirt back in St. Martin's. He flew first-cla.s.s so that he could sleep, but he didn't sleep.

Back in St. Martin's, the French police reported an amazing four suicides in different parts of the island, two just outside Grand Case near the gravel works, and two in Marigot. All four suicides used the same gun, which was not found.

Chapter Thirteen.

After the dusty cliffs of Mali, London was like another planet. A welcome planet, Remo decided, in a friendly galaxy where everyone spoke English.

He'd managed to make it off the African continent in one piece and, thanks to a three-day stint breaking stallions in Morocco, even had enough money in 'his pocket for dinner and a bed in a half-star hotel.

It had been more than two weeks since he'd left Sinanju. Two tough, sad, mixed-up weeks. G.o.d only knew how much longer the Master's Trial would take. How much of it he could take. He had wrestled with thoughts of life and death and honor every waking moment for the past two weeks. He was tired. He needed a rest from his own thoughts.

He wasn't going to leave for the wilds of Wales until morning. So, he decided, for tonight he wouldn't think. Not about Ancion, or Kiree, or what was to come. For tonight, he would give himself a celebration of soap and water and a clean bed and dinner in the Cafe Royal.

It was obviously a waste of money to have dinner in one 126.

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of London's best restaurants, since Remo's digestive system couldn't handle anything but rice and fish and water, but he didn't care. This was his night. He duked the headwaiter five pounds and got the best table in the place, with squishy red leather banquettes to sit on and real English roses to look at beneath the painted Edwardian ceiling. A perfect table.

Except that it was a table for two, and there was only one of him.

"Well, what did you expect?" he asked himself. "You don't know anyone here. You don't know anyone anywhere. You want to be surrounded by friends, kid, you're in the wrong profession."

He guessed he was, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. Loneliness was part and parcel of the life that had been foisted on him. He had dreamed, once, of finding a woman and making a normal life for himself. His fantasies included every corny cliche he could imagine, from kids in the rumpus room to a white picket fence. With time, though, he grew to realize that even such an ordinary ambition would be impossible for him.

He was different. His very body was different. His nervous system was more complex than other men's, the result of years of exercises on his senses. His digestive processes had simplified to the point where he could no longer ingest meat or alcohol, relegating him to a constant diet of unappetizing foods. The training of Sinanju had made him one of the best a.s.sa.s.sins who had ever lived, but it had also deprived him of any possibility of ever connecting with another human being.

He sipped his water and watched the other diners, romantic couples and merry groups.

Only one person came in unattended. Not for long, Remo guessed. There had to be some guy with a fat cigar and a fatter bankroll waiting for her. She was easily the 128.

most beautiful woman in the room. Her gold-blonde hair was pulled back into an elegant knot at the nape of her neck, setting off the cla.s.sic, poetry-and-polo features of her face. She wore a white dress with a little cape of sheer stuff around her shoulders. Probably owns a castle somewhere, Remo thought. The Lady Griselda, raised on horseback and weaned on high tea.

The woman's eye caught his own. Involuntarily Remo smiled. She stopped where she stood, leaving the head-waiter to wend his way halfway around the room before noticing that he'd lost her. She took in Remo with a deep, studious glance. It wasn't s.e.xual, just curious, as if Remo were an interesting exhibit in a museum.

"I'd like to sit over there," she told the impatient waiter. With a curt nod, he led her in Remo's direction.

"HeHo, Remo," she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek.

She had the most compelling eyes he'd ever seen. They were light, but beyond that, he couldn't decide on their color. The irises seemed to shift from gray to pale blue to turquoise to yellow-green and deep emerald, with a hundred shades in between.

"It's so nice to see you. Do you mind if I join you?"

She spoke with a slight accent. So she wasn't English, after all. And she knew Remo's name. He racked his brains trying to remember who she was, but nothing registered.

"Uh-I'd be delighted," he said, rising.

No, he didn't know her, he decided. There was no way he could have forgotten those eyes.

When the waiter had gone, she said, "I hope you don't mind my barging in on you like this. I hate to dine alone. Don't you?"

And a mind-reader, too, he thought. "I've gotten used to it."

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"Yes," she said appreciatively. "I imagine you have."

The wine steward came over with a list. Remo asked the woman if she felt like something to drink, hoping she knew enough about wine to make her own selection. It had been so long since Remo had touched alcohol that he'd forgotten the names on the labels.

"I'll have vodka," the woman said.

The waiter nodded. "A martini?"