Destroyer 052 - Fools Gold

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The telephone rang, its sharp jangle seeming visibly to jolt the quiet waves of air in the darkened room. Smith lifted

the receiver slowly and said, "Hello."

Smith had never before heard the voice, which said, "What kind of deal are you offering?"

"Depends on what you've got," Smith said non-committally. "Suppose you tell me something about yourself."

"What I've got is one of the great stories of our time. A secret agency for the United States

government. An official government assassin and his elderly Oriental trainer. A father-son love

theme that runs through it. Their battles against evil to try to make America safe for all its people

again."

As the voice ranted on, Smith's stomach sank. This man, whoever he was, knew everything.

CURE had been compromised.

. . . HeRefuse!

THE DESTROYER SERIES:

#1 CREATED, THE DESTROYER #26 IN ENEMY HANDS

#2 DEATH CHECK #27 THE LAST TEMPLE

#3 CHINESE PUZZLE #28 SHIP OF DEATH

#4 MAFIA. FIX #29 THE FINAL DEATH

#5 DR. QUAKE #30 MUGGER BLOOD

#6 DEATH THERAPY #31 THE HEAD MEN

#7 UNION BUST #32 KILLER CHROMOSOMES

#8 SUMMIT CHASE #33 VOODOO DIE

#9 MURDERER'S SHIELD #34 CHAINED REACTION

#10 TERROR SQUAD #35 LAST CALL

#11 KILL OR CURE #36 POWER PLAY

#12 SLAVE SAFARI #37 BOTTOM LINE

#13 ACID ROCK #38 BAY CITY BLAST

#14 JUDGMENT DAY #39 MISSING LINK

#15 MURDER WARD #40 DANGEROUS GAMES

#16 OIL SLICK #41 FIRING LINE

#17 LAST WAR DANCE #42 TIMBER LINE

#18 FUNNY MONEY #43 MIDNIGHT MAN

#19 HOLY TERROR #44 BALANCE OF POWER

#20 ASSASSIN'S PLAYpFF #45 SPOILS OF WAR

#21 DEADLY SEEDS #46 NEXT OF KIN

#22 BRAIN DRAIN #47 DYING SPACE

#23 CHILD'S PLAY #48 PROFIT MOTIVE

#24 KING'S CURSE #49 SKIN DEEP

#25 SWEET DREAMS #50 KILLING TIME

#51 SHOCK VALUE

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PINNACLE BOOKS

NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people

or incidents is purely coincidental.

DESTROYER 52: FOOL'S GOLD

An original Pinnacle Books edition, published for the first time anywhere.

First printing, May 1983

ISBN: 0-523-41562-1

Cover illustration by Hector Garrido

Printed in the United States of America

PINNACLE BOOKS, INC.

1430 Broadway

New York, New York 10018

For ink. With love.

And for the Glorious House of Sinanju, P.O. Box 1454, Secaucus, NJ 07094

FOOL'S GOLD

One

She did not expect to see death. She had enough problems with heights. She asked the guide

if the ropes were steady, and if he would be steady at the other end.

"Lady," said the guide, "I got hands of steel and a spine of platinum."

"What does a spine of platinum mean?"

"It means don't worry, lady, you ain't gonna fall."

Dr. Terri Pomfret looked up toward the top of the cave. Without a flashlight, she couldn't even see the top

of the arched cavern.

Some visiting British spelunkers had crawled up there a month ago while exploring these

caves of Albemarle County in North Carolina. They had been going along the ceiling,

driving spike after spike, when they came across it. It was a plaque, some kind of metal,

chiseled into the stone. They had made a hasty, sloppy rubbing of the stone. No one could

identify the writing until it got to Terri Pomfret's office at the university.

"Of course it's Hamidian," she had said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Look at the letters. The formations. Perfect. Perfect ancient Hamidian."

"Then you can read it?"

"This is a bad impression," Terri had said. "I can barely see it."

"If you saw the original, you could read it?"

"Certainly."

"It's at the top of one of the deep Albemarle caves."

"Shit," said Dr. Pomfret.

"Is that negative?" asked her department head.

"What it is is that I hate two things in the world. Going under the ground and going

high."

"You're the only one who can do it. And don't worry, Terri, nobody as pretty as you is

going to be allowed to fall."

So because of her fear of heights, her guide had strung a rope down from the spikes the

British spelunkers had left in the ceiling, and attached a pulley to it. All she would have to

do would be to go straight up to the plaque, pulled up by a rope. No climbing along the

roof of the cave.

"It's safe, lady," the guide said.

"All right," said Terri. The flashlight was sweaty in her hands and her voice felt weak.

Her pencil and paper were strapped to her belt in a little canvas bag. She was 32 years

old, with cream-white skin and raven hair and a face that could have been used for a

magazine cover, but she preferred to use her mind for her work, not her body.

And now her body was being lifted up to the top of the cave and her breath was

stopped as she

was thinking, I will not think about falling to the bottom of the cave. Definitely not. I will not think about falling.

Falling, she thought. She wondered if the silica sand at the bottom of the cave would

soften a fall. The guide's light seemed very far below. She wondered if she released her

bladder, what would happen. Then she reminded herself not to breathe.

Then the roof of the cave was up there at her belly and she saw the plaque and she said

to herself, "This is not English." And then she said to herself, "Of course not, you beanbag,

it's Hamidian. That's why you are here."

The plaque seemed to be chiseled in some rough Hamidian script; as she touched it, she

felt that it was metal, but it had been covered with some kind of paint or stain.

She propped her flashlight, like a telephone receiver, between her cheek and shoulder

and felt the plaque with both hands. It had the normal Hamidian greeting. It was from one

trader to an* other. Even if she had not seen the markings, she would have suspected

Hamidian, because they were the only tribe in the history of South and Central America that

had been great traders, and they left themselves messages, such as this one, in many of the

spots their ships had visited all over the world. A message at the top of a cave. A message

mounted on a stone ceiling 75 feet beneath the ground, discovered only by exact

coordinates. That was how they hid their supplies and treasures for each other.

And there they were at the top of the cave, the coordinates. Four inscriptions down and

there were

guidelines for other Hamidians. She had always been sure the ancient tribe had been to America, too, and here

was the proof. She estimated it had occurred several hundred years before Columbus.

But then the Hamidians had died out, apparently killed off by the Spanish when they

came to loot the Americas of all their gold. No one had ever found the Hamidian

treasures.

She adjusted the flashlight.

A mountain? They were storing a mountain? Why would the Hamidians store a

mountain? Why would they want to protect a mountain?

She got the next word. It was confusing. It meant valuable. It could also mean coin in

some contexts. It was a very common word for the Hamidians. Would they exaggerate? In

poetry, yes. In a message to their fellow Hamidian traders, no. They were very literal and

precise.

poetry, yes. In a message to their fellow Hamidian traders, no. They were very literal and

precise.

Therefore, there was an entire mountain made of coins, thought Terri. Her back hurt.

She wondered why her back hurt. Oh, yes. She was hoisted up here at the top of the cave

and the rope was biting into her back.

Mountain of coins. She remembered one of the first Hamidian poems she had ever

translated. That word was in it. A mountain of pure coins. The sun glowed like a mountain

of pure coins.

No. The sun glowed like a mountain of gold. Gold. An entire mountain of pure gold.

And she was falling.

"You damned idiot," she screamed. "Hold that rope. I'm getting the coordinates."

The rope jumped again and she kicked, feeling a sway, seeing the plaque go farther away

from her

before she had the coordinates. She was swinging and the coordinates were up there

getting farther and farther away and then she realized the rope was sinking through the piton

and she was swinging wide like a pendulum, falling, in longer and longer arcs.

She felt her back would break where the rope held her, the flashlight went flying, the notepad went flying,

and then she hit a wall at the far end of a swing. But it was not a hard hit, more like being bumped by a big man.

It must have been at the outer reach of the arc, just before she came back. And she bumped again, and at the

lowest point of the arc she brushed the ground with her legs, and that diminished the force of her fall, leaving

her in the soft silica dust with the coils of rope coming down after her.

It took a few moments to get her breath. She felt her legs and her arms. No severe pain.

Nothing was broken. A sharp yellow light about fifty feet from her illuminated a patch on

the cave wall. The guide had not only dropped her, he had dropped his flashlight.

"Butterfingers," she said angrily. "Idiot, goddam butterfingers." He didn't answer. She

had to get up herself and walk over to the flashlight herself and pick up the flashlight

herself and then look around for the butterfingered moron.

The flashlight was warm and moist and sticky. She couldn't see what the liquid was and

she didn't really care to. She wanted to find the butterfingered clown who had let her

drop. She shone the flashlight around the cave.

"Shmuck," she said. "All right. Have you run

away? Is that what you did, butterfmgers?" She was almost crying, she was so angry. How

could he do this to her? Him and his spine of platinum. Really.

She felt something beneath her foot in the soft silica sand, something like a small tube.

Had but-terfingers dropped that too?

She pointed the flashlight at the ground. And then she realized why her guide had butterfingers. She was

looking at them. His fingers had all been cut off. And so had an arm, and the head was looking at her with that

stupid open-pupiled gaze of the dead.

Dr. Terri Pomfret, professor of ancient languages, let out a scream in the Albemarle Caves

that didn't stop until she realized that there was no one around to hear her. Unless, of

course, it was the person who had done this to her guide.

Whoever it was did not come after her. And she made it outside, after what seemed like

almost a full day of dazed wandering. It had been forty minutes, and the sticky liquid on

the flashlight was blood.

She would have bet at that moment that the last place she "would ever return would be to

that cave. The police could find no suspect. Indeed, for a while, she was the suspected

murderer of the guide, but then the investigation just died out, and one day soon after

several men visited her. They were from the government and they asked her if she loved

her country.

"Yes. I guess. Of course," she said.

"Then I think you ought to know what a mountain of gold is," said one of the men.

"It's a load of gold," said Terri.

"No, no. That's what a truckload of gold is. A mountain of gold," he said solemnly, "is the most dangerous

strategic asset any nation can have. It is pure wealth. It isn't like oil that is vulnerable and in the ground. It is the

most liquid wealth anyone could have. In such quantity, whoever owned it could literally control the world."

Terri couldn't believe it. Here she was talking to the government and they were talking

nonsense at her.

"Do you really believe the mountain exists?" Terri asked. "I mean, even if the

Hamidians were very specific when they were writing about money, well, let's face it, a

mountain of gold is . . . well, a mountain of gold. I just don't think there is that much in the

world."

Dr. Pomfret did not understand, said the men from the government. The possibility that

the mountain might exist was so dangerous that they had to go looking for it.

Quietly, the government had called in geologists and mineral experts and they theorized

about the structure of the earth and mining capabilities over the years, and on and on,

and they said, yes, maybe there could be a mountain of gold.

"I'm not going to go back into that cave," Terri said.

"Meet Bruno," said the men from the government. Bruno was six-feet-five and had a head

shaved like a bullet and a neck like heavy plumbing for an aircraft carrier. His hands were as

wide as a bread-box. Hair grew on his fingertips.

Bruno smiled a lot. He picked up a telephone in Dr. Pomfret's office and squeezed it until

the wiring popped out like carnival-colored spaghetti.

"This is your bodyguard, Dr. Pomfret."

Bruno's voice was surprisingly cultured, with even a bit of arrogance in it.

"I have never lost a client yet, Dr. Pomfret."

"I can see," she said.

"You can trust me," said Bruno.

"Yes. Well, all right," said Terri. He was big and he was strong and he did give that feeling of assurance. She

was up and down in the cave that afternoon, with the entire inscription translated and the coordinates accurate.

Outside the cave, Bruno kept telling her how he never lost anyone. His grin became

bigger. He told her how most assassins and killers were dumb. That the guide had to be

especially stupid to get his head cut off like that. And his fingers and his arms.

Bruno assumed that the killer had apparently seen him and exercised some rare

intelligence.

"He's probably running right now, back where he came from," said Bruno as they

entered his little M.G. convertible. Bruno smiled again. Bruno put the key into the ignition.

Bruno smiled again. Bruno turned the key in the ignition. Bruno's head fell off into Terri

Pomfret's lap.

She was looking at a gushing severed neck and the head was in her lap. This time when

she screamed, not even her sore throat could stop the yelling. People had to lift her out of the

car still screaming. She was under sedation for a week.

When the doctors said she could talk, a govern-ment representative came into her room.

Terri felt as if she were on a cloud and she was also feeling that when she got off the cloud,

the terror would begin again.

The government official was apologetic.

"Well, golly, I guess we did it again, didn't we?" he said. "Seriously, however"

"Uhhh," said Terri and slipped into comfortable blackness. The doctors explained to the government man

that even though the hospital could give the patient sedation, she also had her own form of self-sedation that

mankind had used throughout history.

"What's that?" the government man asked.

"It's called passing out in terror," said the doctor.

"Was it a loud scream? Was her whole body in it? Did her breasts move when she

screamed?"

Neville Lord Wissex waited for an answer. He wanted to know exactly. He sat in the great

hall of Wissex Castle, in afternoon grays, with a magnum of new Peruvian white, that

made most Chablis taste like a soft drink. A subtle dash of cocaine always aroused the

true bouquet of a white wine.

Outside the window, the British countryside rolled in a pleasant and rare sunny day,

green hill to green hill, the ancient estate of the Wissexes. Behind Lord Wissex were stuffed

heads, mounted on mahogany, with small brass plates under the necks. The eyes looked

realistic because they came from ocular prosthodontics. People used glass eyes for moose.

Why use less for humans?

The Wissex family always insisted that the eyes be the same color as the subject. Therefore, the head of Lord

Mulburry had green eyes as he had had in life. And Field Marshal Roskovsky had blue and General Maximilian

Garcia y Gonzales y Mendosa y Aldomar Bunch had deep brown eyes. As they had had in life.

But the heads were old. The House of Wissex did not take heads any more. One did

not need them as a selling point anymore. Not in this rich world market made so bountiful

by all the new countries created after World War II.

Wissex wanted to hear exactly how the woman screamed and after the Gurkha knifeman

explained how he had made sure the head fell into the lap by the angle of the cut as Lord

Wissex had suggested and how the woman could not control herself, Lord Wissex smiled

and said it was time to dispense with pleasure and get down to business.

A small computer terminal rested on a silver tray. Wissex punched the result of the job

into the computer. There were certain things one did not let servants do. One had to do

these things oneself if one wanted to continue to prosper.

"Let me see your thrust again if you would be so kind," said Wissex.

The Gurkha made the short smooth thrust and Wissex punched its description into the

computer.

"Yes, that's fine," Wissex said, calling in a draw from the computer. It showed

immediately how many knife fighters were in the employ of the House of Wissex, how

many could be recruited, how many could be trained in how much time and

the general state of the market at the moment. They had lost some people in a small job

in Belgium that the local authorities there had mistaken for a sex attack because the victim

happened to be a woman and the weapons used were knives.

But there would be no more jobs like that if this new one worked. The House of Wissex

would be able to go on for the next ten years on just this job if it worked.

Lord Wissex looked at the market pattern on the screen with wedges going to the Middle

East, to South America and Africa. There was so much good business in the Third World

nowadays, but this one could put them all to shame.

"We're going to promote you and give you a raise," said Wissex, looking up at the Gurkha. They might

need many good knife fighters soon, if everything worked out as beautifully as it had in the caves of North

Carolina.

When Terri recovered, she thought she heard a government man say she was going to be

protected by a force so great and so secret that even the head of the department only knew

that the President had given such assurance.

"The President of the United States, Terri, is personally authorizing a protection so

awesome we don't even know what he's talking about. How is that?"

"How is what?" said Terri. She was fighting with all her strength to keep some broth

down in her stomach.

"You are going to be protected by something only the President can authorize."

"Protected for what?" Terri Pomfret asked.

"You're going back into that cave," said the man.

Terri thought that was what he said. She could have sworn that was what he said. But she wasn't quite sure,

however, because she was in a very comfortable, deep blackness.

Two

His name was Remo and the sun was setting red over Bay Rouge in St. Maarten as he

guided his sloop to a slow anchor in the small bay.

The West Indies island was the size of a county back in the states, but it was a perfect

location to beam and receive information from satellite traffic in space. That was what he

had been told.

The island was half French and half Dutch and therefore, in that confusion, America could

do just about anything without being suspected. It was the perfect island for a special

project, except that it had too many people.

Seventeen too many.

Jean Baptiste Malaise and his sixteen brothers lived in grand houses between Marigot and Grand Case, two

villages that were barely large enough to deserve that name, but which had more fine restaurants than almost any

Jean Baptiste Malaise and his sixteen brothers lived in grand houses between Marigot and Grand Case, two

villages that were barely large enough to deserve that name, but which had more fine restaurants than almost any

American city, and all of Britain, Asia, and Africa. Combined.

Fine yachts would dock at Marigot or Grand Case for their owners to enjoy the cuisine.

And sometimes, if the owners were alone and returned

to their yachts alone, sometimes they were never seen again and their boats, under a different name and different

flag, would join the drug fleet of the Malaise family.

The family might never have been bothered except that the island had to be clean. And it

had to be cleaned of seventeen people too many. There could be no outside force

functioning on the island.

The initial plan was that Remo would purchase a powerboat, just the kind that the

Malaise were known to prefer for their drug traffic-two Chrysler engines with a specific gear-

to-power ratio, a certain kind of propellor, a certain kind of cabin, a special decking that

they absolutely loved, and a rakish swept configuration that was produced largely by a

California man in conjunction with a Florida motor assembly works.

Remo would take this boat and dock on the eastern side of the island. Then he would

go to a restaurant alone, allow himself to be followed by one of the seventeen Malaise

brothers, and then quietly dispose of him somewhere off the island.

He would continue to do this until the remaining brothers stopped following him, and

then he would quietly remove whoever was left.

But the plan didn't work. The problem was the boat. He had bought the right boat in St.

Bart's, a neighboring island, right on time a month ago.

But the boat needed what Remo understood was a "fuesal." Everybody else he brought

the boat to didn't know what a fuesal was. When someone finally figured out he was

mispronouncing the item, three weeks of his time had gone and no one could

get the part for another month because it had to be flown in from Denmark.

He never did find out what a fuesal was exactly. He pointed to another boat.

"Give me that," he had said.

"That is not a powerboat, sir."

"Does it run?"

"Yes. On sail with an auxiliary motor."

"Sails I don't need. Does the motor run and does it have enough gas to get me to St.

Maarten?"

"Yes. I imagine so."

"I want it," Remo said.

"You want the sloop," the man said.

"I want the thing that has enough gas to get me from here," said Remo, pointing to his feet, "to there." He

pointed to the large volcanic island of St. Maarten, squatting under the Caribbean sun.

So instead of a powerboat a month earlier, a powerboat that the Malaise family would

have coveted, he had a sloop and now he had only 24 hours to clean the island.

He made it to St. Martin easily in the unfamiliar boat because he did not have to turn

too much.

He was a thin man and he slipped into the water of Bay Rouge without a wrinkle on a

wave. No one on the beach noticed that his arms did not flail the water like most swimmers,

but that that body moved by the exact and powerful thrusts of the spinal column,

pushing it forward, more like a shark than a man.

The arms merely guided everything. There was hardly any wake behind the swimmer

and then he went underwater so silently one could have watched

him, and thought only, "Did I really see a man swimming out there?"

He moved up out of the water onto a rocky part of the shore with the speed of a chameleon, like man's first

ascent from the sea. He was thin and without visible musculature. His clothes clung wet and sticky to his body but

he allowed the heat to escape from his pores and as he walked in the evening air, the clothing became dry.

The first person he met, a little boy, knew where the Malaises lived. The boy spoke in the

singsong of the West Indies.

"They are all along the beach here, good sir, but I would not go there without

permission. No one goes there. They have wire fences that shock. They have the alligator in

the pools around their houses. No one visits the Malaise, good sir, unless of course they invite

you."

"Pretty bad people, I guess," said Remo.

"Oh, no. They buy things from everyone. They are nice," the boy said.

The electric fence was little more than a few wide strands that might keep an arthritic

old cow from trying to dance out of its field. The moat with alligators was a moist marsh

area with an old alligator too well fed to do anything but burp softly as Remo passed its

jaws. Remo could see the house had small holes in the walls for gunbarrels. But there were

also air conditioners in the windows, and nothing appeared to be locked. Obviously the

Malaises no longer feared anyone or anything.

Remo knocked on the door of the house and a

tired woman, still beating a food mixture in a bowl, answered the door.

"Is this the home of Jean Malaise?"

The woman nodded. She called out something in French and a man answered gruffly from inside the house.

"What do you want?" asked the woman.

"I've come to kill him and his brothers."

"You don't have a chance," said the woman. "They have guns and knives. Go back and

get help before you try."

"No, no. That's all right," Remo said. "I can do it by myself."

"What does he want?" called the man's voice in heavily accented English.

"Nothing, dear. He is going to come back later."

"Tell him to bring some beer," yelled her husband.

"I don't need help," Remo told the woman.

"You're just one man. I have lived with Jean Baptiste for twenty years. I know him. He is

my husband. Will you at least listen to a wife? You don't stand a chance against him

alone, let alone the entire clan."

"Don't tell me my business," Remo said.

"You come here. You come to our island. You knock on the door and when I try to tell

you you don't know my husband, you say it is your business. Well, I tell you, good.

Then die."

"I'm not going to die," said Remo.

"Hah," said the wife.

"Is he going to bring back beer?" called the husband.

"No," said the wife.

"Why not?"

"Because he is one of those Americans who think they know everything."

"I don't know everything," Remo said. "I don't know what a fuesal is."

"For a boat?"

Remo nodded.

"Jean knows," said the woman, and then, full-lung: "Jean, what is a fuesal?"

"What?"

"A fuesal?"

"Never heard of it," the man called back.

Remo went into the main room where Jean Baptiste, a large man with much girth and

much hair on that girth, sat on a straight-backed chair. His hair glistened with oil. He

had shaved no sooner than a week before. He belched loudly.

"I don't know what a fuesal is," he said. He was watching television; Remo saw Columbo in

French. It seemed funny to have the American talk in loud and violent French.

"It's better in English," Remo said.

Jean Baptiste Malaise grunted.

"Listen, Mr. Malaise, I've come to kill you and all your brothers."

"I'm not buying anything," said Malaise.

"No. I said kill."

"Wait until the commercial."

"I don't really have much time."

"All right. What? What do you want?" said Malaise, his black eyes burning with anger.

This was his favorite television show.

"I have come," said Remo, very slowly and very clearly, "to kill you and your sixteen

This was his favorite television show.

"I have come," said Remo, very slowly and very clearly, "to kill you and your sixteen

brothers."

"Why is that?"

"Because we cannot have another armed force on the island."

"Who is this we?"

"It's a secret organization. I can't tell you about it."

"What secret organization?"

"I said I can't talk about it," Remo said.

"It's a game."

"Not a game. You and your brothers are going to be dead by morning."

"Do I sign something? When do I get the prize?" asked Malaise.

"I have come here to kill you and your brothers and you will all be dead before

tomorrow noon," said Remo.

"All right. What for?" said Jean Malaise. The commercial was on now and he didn't like

commercials.

"Because you murder people on their boats and smuggle drugs into America with

those boats."

"So why kill me? We've always done that. Are we cutting into your market?"

"Listen," said Remo, feeling a rare sense of anger. "I am not here because I am a

competitor. I am here because you are going to die. Tonight. And your sixteen

brothers."

"Shhhh, the commercial's over."

"Mrs. Malaise," said Remo. "Would you please call all the brothers here? I want to

see them tonight."

"They were here last night," said Mrs. Malaise.

"Just call them and tell them to bring weapons if they want."

"They always carry weapons."

"Call them," Remo said.

"They are really going to kill you," said the woman.

"Call," said Remo and then to Jean Malaise, "What's happening? I don't understand

French."

"This detective, Mr. Columbo, who is French on his mother's side, is outsmarting the

British."

"I think they've changed the story line in translation," Remo said. "You wouldn't happen

to know what a fuesal is?"

"That again?" said Malaise.

"It goes on a boat and is about eight inches long and has ball bearings and does something

with the fuel mixture or something."

"No," said Malaise, still absorbed by the picture.

"You doing a good business?" Remo asked.

"It's a living," the man said.

"So far," said Remo.

It took the brothers less than 20 minutes to assemble in the living room. Remo could not

remember their names. He waited until Columbo was over and then spoke to all of them.

"Quiet. Will you please? Quiet. Quiet. Shhh. Will you listen? I've come here to kill

you. Now we can do it here, but I suggest outside because the floors here will get messy

as hell."

"What is the game?" said one.

"There's no game," Remo said.

"Jean Baptiste says you are giving away something for a game show. We will be on

American television."

"No, no. You will not be on American televi-

sion. You are all going to die tonight because I am going to kill you. All right, is that clear?"

There was much confused talking in French and there were a few angry voices. They all

looked to the oldest brother, Jean Baptiste Malaise.

"Okay, you sonofabitch, now you going to die. You come here interrupting Columbo and bringing no beer

and then lying about us being on television. You will die. We've killed hundreds."

"Okay, you sonofabitch, now you going to die. You come here interrupting Columbo and bringing no beer

and then lying about us being on television. You will die. We've killed hundreds."

"Not in my living room," screamed Mrs. Malaise.

"Outside," said Malaise.

"Not in the peonies," said Mrs. Malaise.

Remo was the last one outside and Jean Baptiste tried a simple turn with a pistol. It was basically just hiding

the pistol, then turning and firing straight ahead on the turn, but Remo caught the wrist before its fingers could

fire and smoothly pushed the sternum up into the heart, stopping it. He caught three temples immediately,

stopping the brains, and followed the others who had yet to turn around with six blows, rapid, using both

hands, sending fragments of the occipital into the brain, three strokes, two hands, one, two, three, very rapidly

like an automatic riveter. Two others were turning around with knives as he caught their skulls at the coronal

sutures, splitting the casing of the brains and rupturing them.

One of the brothers had a submachine gun and was waiting to get a shot. He waited

forever. He couldn't quite pull the trigger because his arm had been crushed at the elbow.

He didn't even see the hand go through the suborbital notch of the skull. There was just

darkness.

Another was squeezing off a shot from a .357

magnum with which he had personally taken 22 lives in desperate island coves. He could

have sworn he was pointing the gun at the stranger but if that were so, why was he looking

at the flash? He did not look long. The big shell exploded in his face.

Another had a length of chain with a heavy copper-pointed lead slug at the end that he

cracked bottles with for practice and faces with for real. Somehow the stranger caught this

deadly slug being whipped with centrifugal force with one delicate finger and just as

delicately put it back into the face that had seen so many others die.

And then there were two, the last two pirates of St. Maarten.

One emptied the clip of a 9-mm pistol at the stranger. He could have sworn he was

hitting the body but the body did not drop. It was dark that night with only a sliver of

moonlight. It became much darker very quickly and forever.

And then there was one. He had intended to finish off whatever there was to finish off,

but no one ever left him with much in the way of combat. It had been his job to kill the

children left over on boats stranded in the Caribbean and he liked the work because he was

the crudest.

"Leave something for me," he called, turning around, and then he saw that it was all

left for him. "Oh," he said.

"Yes," said the stranger.

So the last Malaise looked at his sixteen dead brothers and knew it was up to him. Well, he

was the most cunning Malaise. He was the one who had trained his body to perfection.

He was the Malaise who held not only the black belt in karate

but the famed red belt. He had blended karate with taekwondo.

He had never needed weapons.

He went into his battle position and assumed the posture of the cobra, hissing the power into every sinew

of his body.

The stranger chuckled. "What's that?"

"Find out."

"Don't have time for the play stuff," the American said.

The last Malaise saw the stranger's skull and prepared the blow that could not even be seen by human eyes,

such was its speed. It came from the very bottom of his feet and went out at the stranger's frontal lobe, driving,

striking . . . unfortunately, without much power because the body was not behind it. The body was not behind it

because the arm was going forward and the body was going backward, and the last Malaise was dead.

"Leave them there," said Mrs. Malaise.

"I was going to clean them up," Remo said.

"Don't bother. We're going to have funerals so the undertaker can do it. Have you

eaten?"

"Yeah. I'm not hungry. I've got to find a place here and do something else by noon

tomorrow."

"You're kind of cute. Spend the night. You don't want to go walking around the island

at night."

"I've got to."

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Thetelephonerang,itssharpjangleseemingvisiblytojoltthequietwavesofairinthedarkenedroom.Smithliftedthereceiverslowlyandsaid,"Hello."Smithhadneverbeforeheardthevoice,whichsaid,"Whatkindofdealareyouoffering?""Dependsonwhatyou'vegot,"Smithsaidnon-committally."Supposeyoutellmesomethingaboutyourself.""Wha...

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