"Not my fault," Remo interjected.
"-you should continue on to your next appointment."
"Aw, c'mon, Smitty. Can't I just call it quits?"
"This is not up to me. If it were, you would not have started on this ritual. Chiun, however, made it clear that it is a critical rite of passage."
Remo sighed loudly. "Where to next?"
Smith gave him the directions to his next meeting, a late-night rendezvous in the Kremlin.
"Try to be politic when you meet their president," the CURE director pleaded when he was finished. "U.S.-Russian relations are at a pivotal stage. There is opportunity for a long-term shift for the better in our relationship."
"You got it," Remo vowed. "I won't mention his submarine asphyxiation program. I'll just limit myself to talking about their booze-and-whores-based economy."
He slammed the phone so hard it shattered like glass.
SMITH WINCED at the crackle over the line. Frowning, he folded up his cell phone and replaced it in his battered leather briefcase. Setting the briefcase between his ankles, he sat back in the unfamiliar chair.
The chair had an ugly green vinyl seat and cheap wood. On the arm someone named Judy had used a set of keys to inscribe her eternal love for a gentleman suitor named Len.
Smith was annoyed with himself for mentioning a fourth missing assassin to Remo. But he was tired. This had been a long day.
At the moment Smith didn't know how to handle the Benson Dilkes matter. He had attempted to call Master Chiun in Sinanju for guidance, but for some reason the phone there wasn't working.
For the twentieth time in the past half hour, Smith checked his watch. As he did so, the door finally opened.
The doctor was middle-aged and balding with a too dark tan. It seemed as if no one on staff at the hospital appreciated the dangers of ultraviolet radiation. Smith assumed the climate made it too tempting to stay indoors.
At the doctor's appearance, Smith got to his feet, picking up his briefcase. The two men met at the foot of the hospital bed where Mark Howard lay in gentle slumber. Near the bedside an EKG monitor beeped relentlessly.
The doctor cast a concerned eye over the sleeping patient before addressing Smith.
"You've been briefed by Dr. Carlson. Just so you know, we're not sure what's wrong. Physically there doesn't seem to be a problem. We did a scan and can't find any problem with his brain. It looks like it's some sort of shock."
"I know all this, Doctor," Smith said impatiently.
The doctor nodded. "He seems to be giving signs of coming around. Dr. Carlson and I both think it would be safer to keep him here in Florida rather than move him."
"Is he in any immediate danger?"
"Not that we can tell. But in cases like this it's always better to-"
"The facility where I'm taking him will give him the best of care," Smith interrupted.
The doctor bristled at the gray old man's frosty tone.
"It's your decision," the physician said. "We just wanted you to be certain you knew the risks. I'll send someone in with the forms."
Without another word the doctor stepped from the room, leaving Smith at the bedside.
It was another few minutes before a plump nurse entered, a clipboard tucked under her meaty arm. Smith had seen her come in and out of the room a few times in the past hour.
She smiled as she passed Smith the clipboard. "I'm going to need you to sign a few forms, Mr. Marx."
The cover name had been Howard's. Smith had appropriated it for himself. It was the easiest way to get Mark back to Folcroft without arousing suspicion.
She saw the look of concern on Smith's lemony face as he began signing the necessary documents. "Don't worry," she whispered confidently. "I'm sure your son will be fine."
Smith glanced at the sleeping form of Mark Howard. The instant he saw the young man, the worry lines on his forehead deepened once more. He couldn't shake the image of another hospital bed at another time. Another CURE agent-one Smith had not been able to help.
"Thank you," Smith grunted in reply.
Feeling an uncomfortable shudder, he turned his attention back to the forms.
Chapter 25
Premier Kim Jong Il was in his underground bunker beneath the People's Palace when he heard the noise. The bunker was generally a noiseless place.
It had been designed and built by his dead father, former Korean Premier Kim Il Sung. A maze of poured-concrete tunnels had been constructed in hollowed-out bedrock. The main chamber was buried so deep in the earth that a nuclear blast at ground level powerful enough to level Pyongyang might just might-rattle the liquor bottles in the premier's mahogany bar. The living room of the bunker was wonderful for its silence. That is, until the scratching at the door started.
The premier was watching an American television program starring a bleached-blond woman with plastic lips and plastic boobs who solved crimes while wearing sexy clothes. The same woman used to save people from drowning while wearing sexy clothes. While the woman couldn't act wet in water, her skintight red bathing suit deserved an Emmy.
The premier hated to miss a minute of the action, especially for some annoying scratching sound that sounded as if someone had set a kitten loose in the hall outside his bunker's eight-inch-think steel door.
"What the hell's that noise?" Kim Jong Il demanded.
No one responded. That was odd, for his security detail should have been right outside the door.
The scratching persisted.
For personal safety's sake, only a handful of people knew how to get this far into his inner sanctum. There was only one outsider who had ever penetrated the defenses. But the American Master of Sinanju was less the scratching and more the kick-in-the-door type. And besides, according to the old one, the young one wasn't due in town for weeks.
"Whoever that is, knock it off or else," the premier shouted from where he sat in his favorite recliner. The scratching didn't stop.
Luckily the program went to a commercial. "Dammit," Kim Jong Il growled, hopping to his feet. "If I miss one second of jiggle, heads will roll." He marched across the bunker and threw open the door.
The premier was right. Heads did indeed roll. In fact, one rolled right inside the room.
"Sweet mother of crap!" the premier yelled, jumping back from the decapitated head.
He saw the body that the head belonged to. At least he thought he did. There were so many bodies and body parts piled up in the hall he wasn't sure what belonged with what. All of the dead men wore the uniform of the People's Army.
There was one soldier still clinging to life. It looked to Kim Jong Il as if he'd been force-fed through a piece of farm equipment. Not North Korean farm equipment, of course, which, thanks to decades of glorious Communist struggle, had not invented its way past the ox and lash. The other kind of farm equipment. The kind that was made from metal and moving parts and could make a man look as if he'd been fed through the jaws of John Deere Hell and spit out in strips of pulpy red meat from the far end.
The soldier who had been sliced into ribbons yet still somehow clung impossibly to life looked up at the premier. There was pleading in his eyes. His fingernails were broken and bloodied where he had been scratching at the door.