"Destroyer - 013 - Acid Rock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

His report concluded that the attempt on the life of Vickie Stoner had obviously been planned by someone with a lot of intelligence and very little experience--which ruled out any foreign power. It was his belief that the men who had attempted the assassination were also the planners of it. Certainly there was nothing in the attempt to suggest that it was beyond the capability of beach bums.

What was of special interest, his report stated, was that this was an open contract, something he had read about but had assumed did not exist, for reasons obvious to anyone familiar with the field. This open contract was real and payable, and the money in the funeral wreaths was proof.

It was inevitable that experienced professionals would now attempt to collect the sum, if Vickie Stoner was still alive-which was doubtful. Supervisor Watkins had stated the case accurately: "hopeless." But it was of no concern to N.S.A., since no foreign power was involved.

So ended his summary, and the directors of the N.S.A. did not even bother to completely read it. "No foreign power" put it out of their jurisdiction. As a matter of fact, they had not even ordered the report. A secondary-level official had. He had sent a Xerox of it along to his superior, who he assumed was engaged in some kind of watchdog agency.

Twelve hours had passed between the time Supervisor Watkins had said "hopeless" and the time the Xerox copy of the report landed on a desk in Folcraft Sanitarium in Rye, New York.

At Folcraft the report was read thoroughly; it was there that the order for it had originated. A lemon-faced man scanned the words, jotted some semireadable notes to himself and then filed the copy in a round tube, which shredded it.

He leaned back in his chair and looked out through the one-way glass toward the Long Island Sound, dark now, waiting for the sun.

Hopeless? Maybe not. An interesting equation was at work here. If Miss Stoner were alive, then more competent assassins would go after her. And if they were stopped, then only more competent ones would come. An acceleration of excellence, leading to the very best wherever or whoever he or they might be.

Dr. Harold Smith looked out into the darkness. Wherever they might be. He knew where they were. He was going to send them a telegram. But Vickie Stoner would not worry. The best in the world would be on her side; she need only worry about the second best.

Dr. Smith dialed Western Union himself. His secretary had long since gone home. He gave the name of the person he wished the telegram sent to, and then the message:

"Aunt Mildred to visit tomorrow. She wants the green room."


CHAPTER TWO


His name was Remo and he didn't care when Aunt Mildred was arriving or what room she wanted, and why didn't Western Union go back to the singing telegram, he wondered aloud.

Instead of returning the receiver to the cradle, he placed thumb and forefinger over the telephone cord and with a gentle snap yanked it out of the wall. It was 4:30 a.m.

His suite in Atlanta's Hyatt Regency was air conditioned to a just bearable chill, only slightly more pleasant than the oppressive heat that was building up for the coming day. His mouth tasted of salt, but Chiun had said it would taste of salt. He went to the bathroom and let the water run and when it was cold stuck his mouth to the faucet and filled it.

Sloshing the water around his mouth, he went to the darkened living room of the hotel suite. On a bare portion of the floor slept a frail figure on a mat, a black kimono reaching from the toes to the wisps of white hair. Chiun, the latest Master of Sinanju.

One did not wake the Master of Sinanju, especially not his pupil, even though Remo was never quite sure when Chiun was asleep or in one of his fifty-nine stages of relaxation, sleep being the fiftysecond. Someday, Chiun had said, Remo would achieve these same stages, even though he had started his enlightenment late and even though he was only a white man.

Why was Remo so lucky that he would learn all those stages, Remo had wondered. Because the Master of Sinanju could do wonders with nothing, the nothing being Remo.

"Thanks for your confidence, Little Father," Remo had said and then Chiun had warned him of the coming night of the salt. On that night, Chiun had said, Remo would doubt himself and his abilities and would do something foolish to prove to himself that his skills and training were valid. "But in your case, there will be a problem."

"What problem, Little Father?"

"How will you be able to tell when you do something foolish, since it is so much like everything else you do," Chiun had said, and thought that this was amazingly funny, so funny he repeated it for days and attributed the fact that Remo did not appreciate the witticism to Remo's typical white man's lack of humor.

Sinanju was a village in North Korea, whose poor and young were supported by the labors of the Master of Sinanju, plying the trade of the professional assassin. Chiun, even though eighty years old, was the reigning master of Sinanju. He had himself experienced the night of the salt when he was twelve years old, almost as a rite of puberty. It was another sign of the body becoming something else, he explained.

"What else?" Remo asked.

But Chiun did not answer his pupil, for as he pointed out, a man who lacked a sense of humor also surely lacked wisdom.