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.
How many hands did Kimberly have, anyway?
"You will never escape me, Red One," the voice snapped.
"Wanna bet?"
Pivoting on one leg, Remo launched into a Sinanju Stork Spin, taking the girl with him.
Kimberly's feet left the floor. Her legs lifted from centrifugal force. The silken noose tightened around Remo's throat. He ignored it. This would take only a minute.
His eyes fixed on the spinning figure, Remo watched the room blur behind it. Kimberly was helpless in his grip, her body practically perpendicular to the spinning floor. He had her wrists for sure.
The trouble was, she had another pair of arms that were busily engaged in the serious task of throttling him.
Her eyes were hot orbs of blood. Her mouth contorted in a mirror image of the Kali statue's writhing snarl.
She hissed like a burst steam value.
As Remo watched, the wet scarlet color drained from her eyes.
That struck Remo as a cue, so he simply let go.
The silken noose around his neck jerked, and ripped free.
Threshing wildly, Kimberly struck the far wall with a spasmodic twitching of many white limbs. She collapsed to the rug like a broomed scorpion. Her eyes shut slowly, the red hue fading to a bald white like shelled eggs.
Remo moved in fast, ready to deal the coup de grace with a demolishing snapkick to the temple.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
The sight of Kimberly's now-tattered dressfront did it. It looked as if her brassiere had exploded, spilling white lace and heavy support wiring. Her breasts, pale and pink-nippled, hung from the torn bra. They were very small, practically breastlets.
Remo gaped stupidly, but not at the breasts that had proved to be almost nonexistent. Just under them, lying across her lap, was Kimberly's right arm. Remo registered its existence, noting the banana nail polish.
What made his jaw drop was a second right arm that lay straight out, cradling her crazily angled blond head.
A matched pair of left arms splayed over her left side like puppet limbs after the strings had been cut.
"Jesus Christ!" Remo exploded. "Four arms! She's got four frigging arms."
Hovering just out of striking range, as if before a venomous jungle insect, Remo eyed the bizarre collection of arms. The hidden pair was rooted just below the normal set. All twenty fingernails were painted banana yellow. They were otherwise ordinary arms. Obviously the lower set had been crossed inside her oversize brassiere, clutching the hidden scarf.
The sight made Remo shiver and think of the multiple-armed Kali statue and the terrible unearthly voice that had snarled up from Kimberly's throat.
Years ago he had first heard that voice. In his mind. Kali's voice. And it was Kali's scent in the room. It had been overpowering but even as it faded, Remo shook inside with an unreasoning fear of it. The thing with four arms had been Kimberly. And Kimberly had died. Then it had been Kali. Somehow the spirit of the statue had entered her dead shell and reanimated it.
Still, it was dead now. That was certain. Remo forced himself to approach, fascinated as if at the sight of a dead sea creature flung up on an ordinary beach. But no earthly ocean had spawned the thing that was Kimberly.
He knelt, lifting one bruise-yellow eyelid. The revealed pupil was slack, dilated as if in death.
"Funny," Remo muttered. "I thought they were a lighter blue."
His sensitive fingers felt no pulse of life, no hum of blood, no sensation of life coming through the lifted lid.
Kimberly was definitely dead.
"Little girl," Remo said with relief, "you've had a busy day."
The pupil imploded with life, iris turning cerulean blue to deep violet like splashing paint.
"It's not over yet!" Kali's hateful voice ripped out, and the overpowering smell shot into Remo's lungs like poison gas.
As if through a yellow haze, Remo fought back. But the hands were everywhere, in his face, at his throat, grabbing his wrists, pulling him down, overwhelming him, smothering him.
And in the haze, something was wrapped around his throat, something slick and slippery. And even though Remo Williams dimly understood what that was, and the danger it represented, he was helpless to resist it because the scent of Kali was stronger than his will.
"Who is putty now!" Kali mocked.
When Remo woke up, he was nude.
The dawn light was coming in through the chinks in the closed hotel-room drapery. A ray of sunlight fell across his eyes. He blinked, shaking his head, and tried to throw one arm across his face.
The arm hung up. Craning his neck, Remo saw the yellow silken fetters around his thick wrist.
His startled eyes went immediately to his crotch.
To his horror, he saw the encircling yellow scarf, and an evilly gleaming spot of red at the tip of his erect manhood. He was not greenish-black like the late Iraiti ambassador, but closer to purple.
Remo ripped one arm free. He pulled the other loose. Silk thread smoked and parted. He sat up. The yellow scarves around his ankles were anchored to the bedposts.
They snapped with a single rip of complaint when he retracted his legs.
Remo drew himself into a seated position on the bed. His eyes were bleary, and the ugly scent was like old mucus in his nostrils. Compressing his lips, he blew out through his nose, trying to force the detestable odor from his lungs, his senses, his very essence.
As he did so, he untied the yellow scarf at his crotch and revealed a deeply wound copper wire.