Destroyer 016 - Oil Slick

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THE DESTROYER: OIL SLICK

CHAPTER ONE

"No greater enemy exists than one's own illusion of safety."-House of Sinanju.

He was a big one. Standing upright, he could reach the topmost branches and in one bite

consume the terrified man-apes hiding there. A swat of his giant paw could crack the

sabertooth's spine like a dried twig.

But nothing was dry here in the lush foliage, where each step oozed into muck and the

very air steamed from the rich, tropical growth as Tyrannosaurus Rex thundered through

the swamp.

In drier climates, others of his species would leave their bones for the descendants of

the man-apes to piece together for their museums. But this would be thousands upon

thousands upon thousands of years later, when the man-apes ruled the earth.

For now, the man-ape was only a tender morsel, scrambling desperately through the

treetops, where branches touched and mingled.

Since Tyrannosaurus feared no enemy, he moved along without looking down, his eyes

searching the branches for any man-apes too slow to have fled. Then a hind leg went into

the muck just a little too deeply.

The danger signal flashed in the tiny, bird-sized brain. With his other hind leg, the

giant animal tried to lift himself, but that leg sank even deeper.

As the creature sank, the small front paws grasped at a tree, but only tore it muck-

sucking from its flooded roots. With a raging bellow, the Tyrannosaurus swallowed slime

and then settled into the soft ooze.

One terrified man-ape, hidden in the treetop high above, watched as the huge hulk sank

out of sight beneath Mm. His primitive brain wondered only briefly if there was any way

he could get a piece of that massive meat, now sliding away from bun. He soon forgot the

thought.

No matter, the man-ape was alive for a while longer and what he did not know and could

not perceive was that his own descendants, who would walk easily on two legs and who

would not need the trees for protection, would need the Tyrannosaurus's body for

survival more than he did. His descendants would fight and scheme and lie over the

monster's body.

For even as the oxygen stopped coursing through the giant reptilian body, a strange

chemical change was beginning. The body was beginning to rot, and along with smaller

bodies and foliage it would decompose under great pressure, and over many thousands of

years, these decomposed carbon-based bodies would form a black liquid called oil.

The black liquid moved under the earth as if alive. It passed easily through porous

stones or openings, until it hit a cap of unporous rock that prevented it from moving

upward. When water pressure from below prevented it from moving back downward, it became

a stable, motionless, very accessible pocket of oil. All a man would have to do would be

to sink a hole through the capstone and out would gush dark, black crude.

When that happened, the Tyrannosaurus's body would

be indistinguishable from any other organisms, even the occasional body of the ape that

would become man. They would all be crude oil, and because of a difference of merely

pennies a barrel for their liquid remains, the industrialized world would almost

manipulate itself into bankruptcy.

The ground above the particular pool of oil to which this Tyrannosaurus had contributed

its remains gradually changed from swamp to jungle to sandy hot desert. The area became

a Phoenician trading post, then a Roman city, then trackless desert again. Finally it

was resurrected by Italians, whose presence and wealth attracted roaming Berber

tribesmen.

In the Arab nationalism of the late twentieth century-according to Western measures of

time-the land above the Tyrannosaurus's body became known as the Revolutionary People's

Free Arab Republic. To most of the world it was still known as Lobynia, a name it had

carried for centuries, until the deposing a few years before of its king, His Islamic

Majesty Adras.

While new history books reported that the king had been deposed by the heroic struggles

of the illustrious Arab people's revolutionary fervor, the great page in Arab heroism

had been helped along by Seagram's Seven Whiskey.

The king's personal pilot, Pat Callahan of Jersey City, N.J., U.S.A., had been drunk the

week of the revolution, and only the Lobynian Air Force's chief of staff, Muhammad Ali

Hassan, was available to fly the king's jet from the Swiss health spa he had been

visiting back to the Italian-named capital of Dapoli.

When King Adras heard that revolutionary forces were taking over the palaces and the

Royal Lobynian Radio Station, he offered Callahan five thousand dollars in gold to put

down his bottle of Seagram's Seven, sober up immediately, and fly him and his German

bodyguards back to Lobynia.

"Oh, Majesty, I would be honored to fly you for nothing," said General Ali Hassan, chief

of staff of the Lobynian Air Force.

"Ten thousand dollars," said King Adras to Callahan, who was trying to get to his knees.

"How much is that in rials?" asked Callahan, who had been working for the Icing for five

years now. But before King Adras could answer, Callahan passed out in the hotel suite.

"I will fly you through storm and flak and over ocean and under clouds. I shall carry

your royal majesty in grandeur like the eagle. I go where you command," said Air Chief

of Staff Ali Hassan.

"Try going away from me," said the king, who had $250 million worth of Mirage jets

rusting on Lobynian airfields, an investment made to show royal confidence in the

Lobynian Air Force, whose leading pilot was none other than its commander, General Ali

Hassan.

Hassan was so good, said his fellow Muslims, that he could almost fly a jet without a

Frenchman as copilot. When Ali Hassan had made his first solo in a Piper Cub, Lobynia

promptly bought the jets. They never touched a cloud again.

Thus, when his Air Force chief of staff was the only one capable of returning him-or,

more accurately, willing to return him-to Lobynia, King Adras decided to reassert his

royal presence by making a long-distance telephone call.

With the help of the Swiss national police, he finally got a call through to his palace.

A young colonel answered the phone.

"Where is my minister of defense?" asked the king.

"In jail," said the colonel.

"Where is the commander of my armies?"

"Fled to Morocco."

"Who are you?"

"Colonel Muammar Baraka."

"I don't remember you. Describe yourself."

"I scored highest on the entrance exam in the history of the royal military academy."

"I don't place you."

"I lead the Lobynian armor on your birthday parade."

"Oh, yes. The Italian-looking fellow."

"Correct."

"Well, you are now a general. I have just promoted you. Crush the rebellion. Shoot the

traitors and dean the blood out of the palace before Friday." King Adras looked at the

unconscious Callahan still clutching his bottle of Seagram's Seven. "Make that

Saturday." he said.

"I am afraid I can't do that, your majesty."

"Why not?"

"I am the leader of the rebellion."

"Oh. I guess you're ready to face my German bodyguards?"

"They have no way of getting here and besides every man, woman, and child has lifted his

voice in the revolution. We will tear you and your imperialist reactionary lackey to

shreds. We will burn your eyes out, tear your limbs. Today we have taken the first step

towards Arab glory and civilization."

"This doesn't mean a complete stop to my income, does it?"

"Not necessarily. A king who does not try to regain his crown can live very

comfortably."

"May Allah bless the revolution."

"May Allah bless his majesty."

"Use the Swiss banks. They're more experienced in these matters. And don't worry about

the legend of my family crown."

"What legend?" asked the colonel.

"It is said that when my family ruled Baghdad ... I am not a Berber, as you know."

"That helped considerably with the revolution."

"When we had the caliphate of Baghdad ... this was way before that sergeant declared

himself shah ... well, in any case, it is said that when an ambassador from an eastern

country wished to present the most magnificent gift he could think of, he gave my

ancestor-the caliph- a promise. This promise, he said, was worth more than gold, more

than rubies, more than the finest silks from Cathay."

"Get to the point."

"I'm telling the story," said King Adras.

"I don't have all day."

"Well, to make a beautiful, long story short and ugly, what he gave was the promise of

the services of the finest assassins in the world. He who takes the crown from the head

of any of the descendants of the great caliph will reap a whirlwind from the east. But

it will come from the west."

"Anything else?"

"No."

"Long live the revolution. Good-bye." And the young colonel hung up the phone and did

not think about the fanciful tale, one more tool of reactionary forces, until he held

the industrialized world by a ring through its nose. And the ring was what the

Tyrannosaurus's body had become. Oil.

And at first, just like the Tyrannosaurus, Colonel Muammar Baraka was afraid of nothing.

CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and he was ready.

He did not have to be told he was ready, because if he had had to be told, then he would

not have been ready. He could not feel he was ready because the knowledge was beyond

feeling. It was a knowing so quiet, so beyond far and yet so close at the same time,

that when it was there one knew it.

It came to him, not during nerve-chilling exercises and not during his balance tests as

he hovered twenty stories above the street on a narrow hotel ledge. It came to him in

his sleep hi a hotel room in Denver, Colorado. He opened his eyes and said:

"Wow. I'm ready."

He went into the bathroom and turned on the light. He looked at himself in the full-

length mirror behind the door. It was more than a decade now since he had started, and

if anything, he had lost ten or fifteen pounds since then. Thinner. Definitely thinner.

But he still had the thick wrists. They had been nature's gift; everything else he had

been taught.

He dressed. Black socks, tan slip-on shoes of Italian leather, gray slacks, and blue

shut. He had dark eyes and high cheekbones, the flesh drawn taut under them. There

hadn't been any more operations to change his face recently, and hi the last few years

he had learned, if need be, to change it himself. It wasn't that hard, and anyone could

do it. It was just a matter of tiny changes, muscle manipulations within the mouth, a

tensing of the scalp around the hairline, a change hi the cast of the eyes. When most

people tried it, they looked as though they were making a funny face, because they

forgot and did one thing at a tune instead of making all the changes simultaneously.

The hotel hallway was silent when he slipped out, and Remo Williams did not bother to

lock his room. What would anyone take, anyhow? Underwear? Slacks? So what? And if they

should take money, so what again? What could he spend it on? He'd never be able to buy a

home, at least not one to live in. A car? He could buy all the cars he wanted. So what?

Money was not a problem. He was told at the beginning that he would never have a money

problem again. What they didn't tell him was that it wouldn't make any difference. It

was as though someone were assured that he would be free from attack by flying saucers.

Well now, isn't that nice?

No, there was different treasure now, that no one could take away from him. Remo stopped

in front of the adjacent hallway door. Well, only one person could take it away. That

one person was sleeping hi the adjacent room. His teacher, Chiun, the Master of Sinanju.

Remo took an elevator down to the lobby, hushed hi its deep night wait until morning

would make it alive wit! people again.

When he and Chiun had checked into the hotel the day before, Remo had looked out the

window and said, "There are the mountains."

Chiun had nodded almost imperceptibly. The frail wisp of a beard on the yellowed

parchment face seemed to shiver.

"Here it will be where you must find the mountain," he said.

"What?" Remo had said, turning to Chiun, who was sitting on one of his fourteen gaudily

lacquered steamer trunks. Remo wore all his clothes. When they became soiled, he threw

them away and bought new ones. Chiun never threw possessions away, but he chided Remo

for his white American materialism.

"It will be here," said Chiun, "and you must find the mountain."

"What mountain?"

"How can I tell you, if you do not know?" asked Chiun.

"Hey, don't play philosopher with me, Little Father. The House of Sinanju is a house of

killers, and you're supposed to be an assassin, not a philosopher," said Remo.

"When something is so good, some one thing is so glorious, then it must be many things.

Sinanju is many things and what makes us different from all those that have ever been

before is what we think and how we think."

"God forbid Upstairs should miss one payment to your village, Little Father; they'll

find out how philosophical you are."

Chiun thought a long moment while he looked at Remo. "This may be the last time I look

at you the way you are," he said.

"Which way? As what?"

"As an inadequate piece of a pale pig's ear," said Chiun with a high cackle before he

disappeared into a separate room. He did not answer when Remo knocked. Not for morning

exercises nor for evening advancement did the Master of Sinanju respond to Remo's

knocks, even though during the day, Remo could hear the dull television voices of the

soap operas in which the Master of Sinanju found pleasure. Thus it was for several days,

until Remo was awake and aware that he was ready.

It was cool that spring night in the mile-high city, and while Remo could not see the

great Rockies ahead of him, he knew snow was there. At a street corner, he stopped. The

snow would melt and whatever destruction the winter had done to life would be exposed.

If not buried in some dry place, elk or man or fieldmouse would rot in the sun and

become part of the soil and of the mountain which had been there long before life

tiptoed over its crust, and which would be there long after life was buried in it.

Ten years ago, when Remo had started his training, he did not think of such things.

He had been framed for a murder he had not committed. He had thought he was being

executed but had awakened to find he had been selected as the enforcement arm of a

secret organization that did not exist.

It did not exist because public knowledge of it would be an admission that the United

States Constitution did not work. Its job was secretly to balance the books that had

tilted on the side of crime. Remo, as its assassin, was the chief bookkeeper. "Violate

the constitution to save the constitution," the young president who created the secret

organization named CURE had said.

Only three men knew what it was and what it did. One of them was the president, another

was the head of CURE-a Dr. Harold W. Smith, director of the Folcroft Sanitarium research

center in Rye, N.Y., that served as CURE'S cover-and Remo.

After he had been recruited from the electric chair, Remo had been put in the hands of

Chiun, an aged Korean, for training in the assassin's art. But not even Dr. Harold W.

Smith of Folcroft could have anticipated the changes that the training would make. No

computer could have projected what the human body could do, not even if they had fed in

data calculated on the per gram strength of an ant limes the balance of a cat

They had selected one man and his body to be a tool to serve a cause, and ten years

later he found himself using the cause to serve the tool.

Remo felt the mountains and knew this. He was who he was, and he realized now he had

always known this. It was the mountain that Chiun had told him he must find, the

mountain of his own identity.

Over the decade the Master of Sinanju had shown through training, through pain, through

fear, through despair, just what Remo could be, and now that he understood it, he knew

that what he could be, of course, was just what he had always been.

Done. Then he knew. So this was it. As Chiun had said, the truth is a common thing. Only

fairy tales glitter like rubies in a crystal universe.

"Hey, gringo. What you looking at, eh, gringo?"

The voice came from behind a parked car. There were eight of them, none taller than

Remo. Cigarette butts gleamed in the black, moonless night. Down the street a traffic

light became green and nothing moved.

"Hey, gringo, I talking to you. You Chicano or gringo?"

"I was thinking and you interrupted me."

"Hey, Chico, he thinking. The gringo is thinking. Everybody shut up, the big gringo, he

thinking. What you thinking, gringo?"

"I'm thinking how lucky I am to be upwind from you."

"Hey, the gringo, he smart. The gringo he real smart. Heavy, man. Gringo, no one tell

you this is Chicano territory? This is a Chicano street. I Caesar Ramirez. You need my

okay to go thinking on my street, gringo."

Remo turned and walked back toward the hotel. He heard one of the youths yell something

else. Then they were following him. When one got so close Remo could feel the hot breath

on his neck, Remo caught him by the lips and yanked forward, pulling the arching body

over in front of him, before walking into the young man's descending spinal column. Pop,

crack, that was it; the body was a lifeless bag of flesh. When the sanitation men found

it the next day, the hips and shoulders would not be connected by bone.

Immediately knives were thrust at Remo's back. In a little dance step, without changing

direction or stopping, Remo continued moving toward the hotel.

One knife wielder came close and Remo took his wrist and fenced off another knife. He

did this in a very simple way. He popped blade into brain and suddenly the second blade

no longer faced his stomach.

Remo kept walking toward the hotel, still carrying the first knife wielder's wrist. Then

one more came at him and made the mistake of getting between Remo and his hotel. It was

Caesar and he saw Remo's face and decided to get out of Remo's way, but he changed his

mind a moment too late.

While the city of Denver would pay for Caesar's funeral as it had paid for his birth,

his house, his food, and his schooling (where he had learned to call all this sustenance

oppression, though he did not feel oppressed enough to get a job), somehow the city of

Denver had deserted him now in his moment of need. Caesar found himself within arm's

length of the crazy gringo. Alone. Without even a social worker to help. And that was

all

No more Caesar.

Chico, whose wrist had been borrowed for the fight, bawled and demanded it back. Without

looking, Remo casually tossed it over his shoulder. It landed at the young man's knees.

Back at the hotel, he knocked on the door that had not answered for the last few days.

"Little Father," he called. "I have found the mountain. I always was what I am now. The

ignorance has been removed."

And now there was an answer.

"Good. Then we are ready and we will be found." Chiun had been saying the same thing for

weeks and Remo had not understood it. But now he did. He knew what Chiun meant by saying

that they would be found, and he knew by whom.

"I understand, Little Father," he called.

And from another nearby room came an angry growl.

"Hey, you out there, shut up or I'll come out and close your mouth for good." And since

Remo had nothing more to say, he went back to his own room and back to sleep, realizing

that a mountain was a thing you climbed or fell from, but not a place where you rested.

CHAPTER THREE

The first thing Dr. Ravelstein noticed about the badges was that they were upside down.

If the two men in the neat gray suits were really from the FBI, wouldn't their badges be

right side up in their billfolds? Then again, Dr. Ravelstein had once met an FBI man

while getting a security clearance, and didn't he use an identification card la-stead of

a badge? Oh well, no matter.

"I can't make out your badges," said Dr. Ravelstein. He was tired. It was 3:30 A.M. and

since 9:00 A.M., the day before, he had been looking at greenish printouts from the

terminal connected to one of the University of Michigan computers. With his tired fifty-

year-old eyes, he probably couldn't have made out whether the agents had shown him

badges or sliced salami, he thought. Thinking about his tired eyes, Dr. Marvin

Ravelstein, professor of engineering, suddenly realized that his eyeglasses were not in

front of his eyes. He had put them somewhere when he had heard the door in the

laboratory open.

"If you put on your glasses, you might make out our identification a little better,"

said the larger agent.

"Yes. The glasses. Where are they?"

"On your head."

"Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Who are you? Ah, yes, Special Agent Paul Mobley and Special

Agent Martin Phil-bin. I see. Yes. Very good. Very good. Very good. Well, thank you for

dropping by. It's been nice having you."

"Sir, we've come to discuss something very important You may be the man who can save the

world."

Dr. Ravelstein sighed and nodded, indicating stools near his laboratory bench. Outside,

the unseasonable spring heat made the Michigan campus a muggy sock of a night. In here,

his own cigarettes combined with the air conditioning to turn the air into a bitter

environment, especially if it had to be endured for more than six hours at a stretch.

Dr. Ravelstein nodded to himself again. What the FBI men had said was correct. He not

only could save industrialized society from bankruptcy, he had done it And the amusing

part was that the numbers had told him he was a success, not the tangible products in

the other room. Those could be touched by anyone and anyone could say this is fine crude

oil over here and this is a marvelous new building material over there, but not until

the computer digested massive marketing facts, did he know that he was successful. His

months-old suspicions had been borne out just twenty-five minutes ago. Twenty-five

minutes, and it had taken the government bureaucrats no longer than that to get their

sticky fingers into the pie.

"Can save the world?" said Ravelstein. "I have, if you must know. At least, I've given

it a twenty-year reprieve. I suppose I'm in for some sort of a prize if that means

anything at all. Actually, gentlemen, I'd rather have a good night's sleep. What can I

do for you? Please make it brief. I'm very tired."

"We have reason to believe, Dr. Ravelstein, that your life is in danger."

"Nonsense. Who would want to harm me?"

"The same people who killed Dr. Johnson of Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute."

"Erik is dead? No," said Ravelstein, sinking softly into Ms chair. "No. I don't believe

it. I don't believe it."

"Late yesterday. His back was broken in a fall. It looked like an accident, but it

wasn't. It was as accidental as a sniper shot. One of his assistants saw the two men

push him down an elevator shaft," said Special Agent Mobley, the larger one.

"Yeah, it was said that he put up a real struggle for a man his age," said Philbin, his

thin, pinched face apparently mournful.

Was the agent laughing at him from behind that mournful face? Did that agent think there

was something funny about Dr. Johnson's death? No. Impossible. It must be the hour. It

was so very late.

"I'd like to call the Johnson family."

"At this hour, Dr. Ravelstein? Perhaps they have just gotten Mrs. Johnson under

sedation. You don't know, do you?"

"Are you sure he was ... he was killed?" "Yes. He made a tragic mistake. His work in

hydrocarbons came too close to providing a substitute for gasoline," said

Mobley.

"Oh, he had that for years," said Ravelstein. He lit a cigarette and offered the two men

the pack. They refused but Mobley lighted the cigarette for Ravelstein, who sucked

hungrily on the smoke. At this hour, he didn't even enjoy cigarettes any more. Then

again, he thought, how many cigarettes a day did he ever enjoy? One? Possibly none.

"What do you mean, he had that for years?" asked Agent Mobley.

"Erik had the gasoline substitute for years. Don't you gentlemen understand what the oil

crisis is all about? The whole energy crisis has got nothing to do with the amount of

energy or whether we can find more. There is more energy available than man can ever

use. He'll be trampling himself to death for lack of space before he runs out of

energy."

Dr. Ravelstein watched the shock on the faces of the two agents. It was always like

that. As if one of the major problems of industrialized society was as mysterious as an

eclipse to a savage.

"You mean the Johnson gas substitute was not a solution?" asked Agent Mobley, his beefy

face squinted hi disbelief. "He died for nothing?"

"Died for nothing. Died for something. Dead is dead. I don't know why people consider

some sorts of death noble."

"You were saying, Doctor, about Johnson's substitute being no solution."

Ravelstein smiled. He lifted up the heavy folded computer printout forms and handed them

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THEDESTROYER:OILSLICKCopyright(c)1974byRichardSapirandWarrenMurphyCHAPTERONE"Nogreaterenemyexiststhanone'sownillusionofsafety."-HouseofSinanju.Hewasabigone.Standingupright,hecouldreachthetopmostbranchesandinonebiteconsumetheterrifiedman-apeshidingthere.Aswatofhisgiantpawcouldcrackthesabertooth'sspin...

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