She smiled as she passed Smith the clipboard. "I'm going to need you to sign a few forms, Mr. Marx."
The cover name had been Howard's. Smith had appropriated it for himself. It was the easiest way to get Mark back to Folcroft without arousing suspicion.
She saw the look of concern on Smith's lemony face as he began signing the necessary documents. "Don't worry," she whispered confidently. "I'm sure your son will be fine."
Smith glanced at the sleeping form of Mark Howard. The instant he saw the young man, the worry lines on his forehead deepened once more. He couldn't shake the image of another hospital bed at another time. Another CURE agent-one Smith had not been able to help.
"Thank you," Smith grunted in reply.
Feeling an uncomfortable shudder, he turned his attention back to the forms.
Chapter 25
Premier Kim Jong Il was in his underground bunker beneath the People's Palace when he heard the noise. The bunker was generally a noiseless place.
It had been designed and built by his dead father, former Korean Premier Kim Il Sung. A maze of poured-concrete tunnels had been constructed in hollowed-out bedrock. The main chamber was buried so deep in the earth that a nuclear blast at ground level powerful enough to level Pyongyang might just might-rattle the liquor bottles in the premier's mahogany bar. The living room of the bunker was wonderful for its silence. That is, until the scratching at the door started.
The premier was watching an American television program starring a bleached-blond woman with plastic lips and plastic boobs who solved crimes while wearing sexy clothes. The same woman used to save people from drowning while wearing sexy clothes. While the woman couldn't act wet in water, her skintight red bathing suit deserved an Emmy.
The premier hated to miss a minute of the action, especially for some annoying scratching sound that sounded as if someone had set a kitten loose in the hall outside his bunker's eight-inch-think steel door.
"What the hell's that noise?" Kim Jong Il demanded.
No one responded. That was odd, for his security detail should have been right outside the door.
The scratching persisted.
For personal safety's sake, only a handful of people knew how to get this far into his inner sanctum. There was only one outsider who had ever penetrated the defenses. But the American Master of Sinanju was less the scratching and more the kick-in-the-door type. And besides, according to the old one, the young one wasn't due in town for weeks.
"Whoever that is, knock it off or else," the premier shouted from where he sat in his favorite recliner. The scratching didn't stop.
Luckily the program went to a commercial. "Dammit," Kim Jong Il growled, hopping to his feet. "If I miss one second of jiggle, heads will roll." He marched across the bunker and threw open the door.
The premier was right. Heads did indeed roll. In fact, one rolled right inside the room.
"Sweet mother of crap!" the premier yelled, jumping back from the decapitated head.
He saw the body that the head belonged to. At least he thought he did. There were so many bodies and body parts piled up in the hall he wasn't sure what belonged with what. All of the dead men wore the uniform of the People's Army.
There was one soldier still clinging to life. It looked to Kim Jong Il as if he'd been force-fed through a piece of farm equipment. Not North Korean farm equipment, of course, which, thanks to decades of glorious Communist struggle, had not invented its way past the ox and lash. The other kind of farm equipment. The kind that was made from metal and moving parts and could make a man look as if he'd been fed through the jaws of John Deere Hell and spit out in strips of pulpy red meat from the far end.
The soldier who had been sliced into ribbons yet still somehow clung impossibly to life looked up at the premier. There was pleading in his eyes. His fingernails were broken and bloodied where he had been scratching at the door.
"Help me," the man begged. The premier's mind reeled.
Someone had breached his security. They had gotten all the way downstairs from the People's Palace without being detected. They had slaughtered his personal guard without so much as a whimper and left one man alive on the premier's doorstep as a gruesome calling card.
He looked down at the pleading man on the floor. "You're on your own," Kim Jong Il said to the dying soldier. "I'm not helping anyone but me." Grabbing for the doorknob, he started to slam the huge door shut. It wouldn't budge.
And then he noticed the hand. It was pressed to the door, holding it open. The hand was attached to the man who was suddenly standing before the premier. The man wore a black business suit and had a dead look in his hazel eyes.
"Forgive me, my premier, I have been away from my homeland for many years," the man in the suit said. "Has Pyongyang now made it a crime to help others?"
And with that he put his foot through the dying soldier's skull. The soldier collapsed with a sigh.
The premier saw that his visitor's shoe came back clean. It should have been a mess. And if this man was responsible for the rest of the carnage in the hallway, he should have been covered with blood. He had walked through the slaughter without so much as a speck of blood on his neat suit.
The premier felt a tingle in his belly.
The way the man stood was familiar. So calm, so centered. Hands pressed together, fingertips tucked into the sleeves of his white dress shirt. But the eyes clinched it. He had seen those eyes before. On a little old man who, with a twist of pinching fingers, could bring the mighty premier of North Korea to his knees.
"Oh, my God," Kim Jong Il whimpered. "There's another one of you."
The man offered a smile that not only lacked warmth, but also seemed to drop the room temperature by ten degrees.
"No. There is only one," he said. "My name is Nuihc. You have heard of me."
The way he said it, the premier could tell he should nod. He did so. Vigorously.
"Oh, yeah. Nuihc. Right. I should have known."
Nuihc's expression grew cold. "Do not lie to me," he spit. He shook his head. "Have I been gone so long?" he muttered bitterly. "I am not even remembered in my own land by the son of the man to whom I promised the world."
Kim licked his lips nervously. "You knew my old man?"
Nuihc nodded. "Once, many years ago, I made a bargain with your father. I offered him my services."
"Services? You mean like with the killing and all? Thanks, but I've got folks to do that. Hell, one more winter like last year and we'll all freeze or starve to death. Great of you to think of me, though."
He tried the door again. Though he strained to close it, Nuihc held it open, no strain on his flat face. "My motivation in your father's day was greed," Nuihc said. "That has changed. The world can go to whoever desires it. I want vengeance."
The premier could see he was getting nowhere. With a grunt he released the door handle. "Vengeance against who? The old guy or the kid?"
"Both murdered me. Both will pay."
Kim Jong Il wasn't sure he had heard right. "Did you say murder?" he asked.
There was no response. At least not verbally.
In that moment the premier saw something more than death in this man's eyes. It sparkled beneath the surface. The leader of North Korea had seen it before. The eyes of this Nuihc who stood before him held a touch of madness.
"I extend to you the same offer that I made to your father," Nuihc said, "with the same price. I give you the world, but Sinanju is mine."
Kim Jong Il clenched his hand. The pain lingered where the Master of Sinanju had assaulted him at the airport. "The old Master will have something to say about that."