And then the front of Kimberly's yellow dress began a fury of rending, tearing cloth and Remo's horrified eyes went to the things that were breaking free.
And a familiar voice that was not Kimberly's snarled,
"You are mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!"
Chapter 13
Harold W. Smith waited an hour before he began worrying. After two hours, he became concerned. It should not take Remo this long to go through a dead woman's purse.
Smith reached into his right-hand desk drawer and stripped foil from a sixty-nine-cent roll of antacid tablets, causing two tablets to drop into his waiting palm. He put them in his mouth and went to the office mineral-water dispenser. He thumbed the button. Cool water rilled into a paper cup. Smith swallowed the bitter tablets, chasing them with water. After checking for leaks, he returned the paper cup to its holder. It hadn't started to decompose from repeated use yet. He might get another month out of it.
Smith returned to his desk as the phone rang.
He reached for the blue phone, realizing his error when the ringing repeated itself after he lifted the receiver.
It was the red phone.
Smith switched the blue receiver to his other hand and snatched up the red one.
"Yes, Mr. President?" he said with muted embarrassment.
"The lid has come off," the President said tightly. "The Iraiti government wants to know where their ambassador is."
"This is not my area, but I would suggest you arrange a plausible accident."
"It may be too late. They've taken a hostage. A big one."
"Who?" Smith asked tightly.
"That anchorman, Don Cooder."
"Oh," Smith said in a tone of voice that didn't exactly convey relief, but certainly wasn't concerned.
"I won't miss him either," the President said, "but dammit, he is a high-profile U.S. citizen. We can't let these repeated provocations go unpunished."
"The decision to go to war rests with you, Mr. President. I have no advice to offer."
"I'm not looking for advice. I want answers. Smith, I know your man did his best to find the ambassador alive. The FBI tells me he was already cold before we left the gate. So that's that. But what the heck is behind it?"
"The ambassador appears to have fallen victim to a serial killer, who I am pleased to report was . . . ah . . . removed from the scene only within the last hour."
"Who, Smith?"
"A woman I am now trying to identify."
"You mean this wasn't political?"
"It does not appear to be," Smith told the President. "Naturally, I will reserve judgment until our investigation has been completed. But from all accounts, the perpetrator seems to have been affiliated with a dangerous cult that was all but neutralized several years back. Other, similarly strangled bodies, have turned up in Washington. Identical yellow scarves wound around the necks of each of the victims."
"A cult, you say?"
"A single woman, who is now dead. There is no reason to believe the cult is active."
"In other words," the President of the United States pressed, "we don't have any live scapegoat to hang this on?"
"I am afraid not," Smith admitted. "Our task is enforcement, not arranging subterfuges."
"No criticism was intended or implied."
"I know."
"Keep working, Smith. I'll get back to you. I'm convening an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss our response to the Iraitis."
"Good luck, Mr. President."
"I don't need luck. I need a goddamned miracle. But thanks anyway, Smith."
Harold Smith replaced the red receiver. He noticed he was still holding the blue one tightly in his other hand. It began emitting the off-the-hook warning beep. Smith replaced it hastily, thinking that he never used to be so absentminded. He hoped it was age, not Alzheimer's. For if his twice-yearly medical exam should ever reveal such a judgment-clouding prognosis, Harold Smith would be forced to make a call to the President of the United States informing him that CURE could no longer function as a secure arm of executive-branch policy.
It would be up to the commander in chief to decide whether Smith would have to be retired or CURE must shut down. If the latter, it would be up to Smith to close down the organization, wiping clean the massive data banks of the four computers hidden behind false walls in the Folcroft basement and taking a coffin-shaped poison pill that he carried in the watch pocket of his gray vest. For only three living persons knew of CURE. And to publicly admit that it even existed would be to admit that America itself didn't work. When the time came for the organization that didn't exist to vanish, all traces-human and technological-would also have to be obliterated. Only a grateful President would remember.
As for Remo Williams, the human superweapon Harold Smith had created, Smith had several ways of retiring him.
If Remo hadn't already abandoned America forever, which was a growing suspicion in Smith's mind.
His weak gray eyes went to the silent blue telephone.
He felt a vague apprehension, but not panic. There had been so many near-disasters in his thirty years as director of CURE that Smith could not summon up any panic. Perhaps, he thought, that was a bad thing. Fear had motivated him in the past, forcing him to go to superhuman extremes to fulfill his mission. Without fear, a man was too prone to let the tides of life swamp him. Smith wondered if he hadn't simply lost the fire in his belly and if that wasn't reason enough to make the termination call to the White House ....
Chapter 14
"Mine! Mine! Mine!"
Two grasping hands exploded for Remo's throat like pale spiders with yellow feet, a banana-colored silk scarf strained between them.
Fighting the clogging miasma in his lungs, Remo released Kimberly's wrists. Or what he thought were her wrists.
He didn't know what to think. In the instant of time in which his mind was paralyzed by impossibility, his Sinanju-honed reflexes took over.
He got one attacking wrist, clamped hard on it. It felt solid. Whipping away the scarf, the opposite hand snapped it at his eyes. Remo ducked instinctively. He snared the other wrist by feel, and twisted it against the natural flex point.
That hand was solid too. Not illusionary. His furiously working brain had begun to question their reality.
A snarl blew hot breath into his face. And as Remo tightened his death grip, two more yellow-nailed hands snatched up the falling scarf and slipped it over his head.
It was happening faster than Remo could comprehend. He had had Kimberly by the wrists. Yet her hands had exploded toward him. He had grabbed them, and now the others were back, the phenomenon repeating itself like a nightmare record skipping. And an absurd thought welled up in his brain.