Although Mark hadn't been in control of his actions, that didn't lessen the guilt in the days and weeks after those terrible events. The patient was still at large. Purcell had gone silent after his escape from Folcroft. But there were probably others dead. All thanks to Mark Howard.
Those deaths had been at a distance. Other hands had done the actual deed. Maybe he could have lived with that. Gotten over the guilt. But they weren't the only dead.
Mark had killed. Personally. With his own two hands.
Only one man. Not that "only" could dismiss the horrible significance of such an act.
It was justified. The man with the gun on that cold December night had been about to shoot Dr. Smith. But that didn't matter. The guilt afterward had swelled to a point where it threatened to consume Mark. He had fought to hide it, to control it. But for months through spring and summer the anguish was almost more than he could bear. He came to work, did his job, went home. No one, not Dr. Smith, not anyone had guessed the crushing burden Mark Howard lived under all those months.
And then he stopped it. Just like that.
He remembered the day. September 10, 2001. Mark had finally gotten his nephew's drawing framed. He had just put the small frame on his desk. As he sat there in the yellow afternoon sunlight, he thought of the tiny hand that drew it, of the life of joys and heartaches that had not yet been explored, and of the lurking forces that threatened that young life, and the lives of all Americans.
Mark thought of his job at CURE. A frustrating, ugly, dangerous job. And a necessary one.
Guilt over what he had done, over what he had to do, was a small price to pay to help ensure the safety of those lives. And in that moment of realization, guilt was replaced by cold determination.
There were terrible events that took place the next day. Events that changed the world and America forever. But in a quiet moment the day before the world turned upside down, Mark Howard had already changed. The events of September 11 only helped to codify that resolve. Since that time, Mark had come to his small Folcroft office determined to toil and sweat and worry to the best of his abilities so that his fellow Americans did not have to.
For the moment his regular CURE duties were on hold.
Mark logged the death of the French assassin. The man joined the two English Source agents who had been reported dead earlier that day. He wondered briefly what country would be next. Most likely Germany.
Mark was pulling up his list of the best-known German killers when the phone at his elbow jangled to life.
It was the outside line.
Puzzled, he glanced at his watch. After 6:00 p.m. Mark had recently convinced Dr. Smith to relax his schedule. Now, two days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, the CURE director went home from work at 5:00 p.m. These days Smith's secretary generally left around the same time. After they were gone the calls were routed to an answering service.
This was the public line, not the one used by family or friends. Confused, Mark scooped up the clunky old phone.
"Folcroft. Mark Howard speaking."
The noise that issued from the earpiece was so loud, Mark immediately had to yank the phone away from his ear. For an instant it sounded like the electronic shrieks of an Internet connection. For a second he held out the phone, unsure if it was some sort of malfunction.
He was about to hang up when he heard a series of distinct sobs amid the horrible shrieks. Only then did Mark realize that the noise wasn't phone static. It was the sound of a woman in distress.
He drew the phone tentatively back to his ear. "Hello?" he asked uncertainly.
The woman cried, she screamed. She wailed full heart and soul in pain into the phone. All in a language that Mark Howard could not begin to understand.
"I'm sorry," he said after a moment of listening to the crying woman. "I think you've got the wrong number."
He didn't know what else to say. He was about to hang up on the pitiful caller when she suddenly blurted out something that made Mark's hand grow white on the receiver.
"Sinanju," the woman bawled. Mark gulped. He hesitated.
Korean. Yes, the woman could be speaking Korean. He had heard Remo and Chiun speak it enough. He didn't know what to do. This was unprecedented in his CURE experience.
"I-I'm not sure what you want," he said cautiously, his heart beating faster.
"Sinanju!" the woman repeated, her frustration apparent. And then her voice failed and the gibberish she had been blurting was consumed by grief. She wept into the phone.
"Can you speak English?" Mark asked.
But the woman was no longer listening. She rebuffed all of Mark's attempts to question her. She finally hung up the phone in the middle of her pitiful sobbing.
Swallowing hard, Mark hung up his own phone. He grabbed it back up immediately. He held it there for an uncertain moment, halfway from desk to ear. He glanced at his watch. It was suppertime at the Smith household. Right about now Dr. Smith would be sitting down to a plate of his wife's rock-hard meat loaf. Mark Howard had been invited to supper with the Smiths on a number of occasions. He knew well of all the horrors it entailed.
"You can thank me later, Dr. Smith," Mark muttered.
From memory he began dialing his employer's home number.
Chapter 13
They didn't leave France.
Remo was surprised when Chiun flagged them a cab to the Left Bank. On a forgotten side street near the Hotel de la Loire, the taxi stopped in front of a small apartment building.
"Wait here," Chiun commanded the taxi driver.
"Why aren't we taking a train to Spain to kill someone on a plain?" Remo asked as they mounted the front stairs.
"Because everything in this world does not conform neatly to what you think it should be, that's why," the old man replied mysteriously.
Remo didn't like the sound of that at all. His teacher's words and tone screamed trap.
On a panel next to the door twenty old-fashioned doorbells were lined up in neat rows of ten.
Remo waited for the floor to drop out from under him when the Master of Sinanju pressed a doorbell. He didn't know if he should be pleased or not when it didn't.
There was a distant ring somewhere in the depths of the creaky old building. It took a long time-forever, it seemed-for someone to answer. When a voice finally did sound from the speaker, it was guttural and low. Satan's voice rising up from the dark Pit.
"Kahk vaz zavoot?" the disembodied voice asked. Chiun said something in the same language. Whatever he said seemed to do the trick. The sepulchral voice grumbled something else that Remo couldn't understand.
"That wasn't French," Remo said as they were buzzed inside. "Hell, that didn't even sound human."
"You are right," said the Master of Sinanju as he swept through the door. "It was not French."
"What about the human part?"
Chiun tipped his head. "More or less," he mused. Turning on his heel, he marched for the stairs. The building smelled like damp wood and cat pee. Remo followed the Master of Sinanju to the top floor. There was only one door on this level. Chiun rapped a knuckle on the warped veneer.
A long moment passed. Finally, with rusty deliberation, the grimy brass doorknob turned. The ancient door creaked open on pained hinges.
Remo had not sensed anyone on the other side. He was certain Chiun hadn't done some trick to open the door. On cautious feet he followed the Master of Sinanju inside.
The apartment looked like the dusty storage room of a forgotten museum. Antiques crowding the foyer had been stacked against the walls. There were mirrors of solid gold, candelabra of ornately carved and rearing horses and footstools of silk that had long since turned to rot.