"I think it was a mob hit," Officer Funkhauser volunteered when two homicide detectives made their appearance.
"What makes you say that?" the black one asked while the white one knelt over the body.
"Guy had his eyes gouged out, and his tongue is missing. That says mob hit to me."
The homicide detective grunted and said, "We deal in facts."
"And it's a fact that poor guy's lacking eyes and a tongue. They didn't melt in the heat. It won't break sixty-five today."
"We deal in facts," the detective repeated. "Harry, what have you got?"
"I think we'd better get this guy photographed and off the street before we all get run down."
That took all of thirty minutes, and when the body had been photographed from every angle and the outline traced in metallic silver to withstand tire prints, the coroner's people laid him on a gurney and started to cart him off.
The body wobbled on the gurney, and as they raised it to the level of the wagon, the eyeless head rolled to the left. Out of the left ear poured a pinkish gray gruel, and the seasoned veterans on the scene recognized it as brain matter.
"Jesus."
They gathered around the gurney as it was set back on the ground.
"Brains don't liquefy like that, do they?" Funkhauser muttered.
"How long has this guy been dead?" an EMT wondered aloud.
They poked and prodded and noticed the flesh hadn't even cooled, and decided less than an hour.
"Brains don't liquefy," the homicide detective repeated.
No one disputed him. But they were looking at human brain matter lying like so much custard beside the man's left ear.
The medical examiner got down on one knee and shone a light into the corpse's right ear.
"What do you see?" asked Officer Funkhauser, who was by this time fascinated. He had always wanted to go into Homicide. This was very educational.
"Step aside," the M.E. barked.
When he did, the M.E. gasped.
"What is it?"
"I see daylight. I can see clear through this man's skull."
"Is that possible?"
"If the man's head was empty, it is," he said, climbing to his feet. His knees were shaking. He said, "Load him up and get him out of here."
Officer Funkhauser watched the body slide into the back of the meat wagon and spoke the obvious.
"The mob doesn't normally mess with a guy's brains. Do they?"
AT THE MANHATTAN MORGUE, the body was identified as that of Doyal T. Rand by the contents of his wallet.
Chief Medical Examiner Lemuel Quirk X-rayed his skull and determined it was empty of all soft tissue. No tissue, brains or soft palate. Other organs were missing, too. The pineal gland. The thyroid. The sinuses. And the entire auditory canal.
When they cut him open, they discovered an undigested mass in his stomach that caused Quirk to go as pale as sailcloth.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say I was looking at human brain matter," he muttered.
His assistant took a quick look, gulped hard and grabbed at his mouth. As he ran from the autopsy room, he could be heard retching all the way down the hall.
Dr. Quirk scooped out the contents of the stomach, weighed them and, with a stainless-steel scalpel, probed them.
Brain matter all right. Liquefied, like scrambled eggs that had set. But mixed in were red bits of pulp and flecks of matter he realized with a heart-pounding start were the clear lenses of a human eye.
"How...?"
Going to the head, Quirk pried open the mouth and shone a penlight down the man's gullet.
"No soft palate ...yes, it was possible."
Somehow the man's brain, eyes and other soft tissues had been churned to a liquid and simply slid down his unobstructed esophagus into his waiting stomach via natural apertures in the basal skull like the foramen magnum, the clivus and possibly the cribiform plate. Since there had been no digestion, the liquefaction had occurred at or just before the time of death. It was all very logical, the biology of it.
Except it was impossible. People's brains did not turn to liquid and go sliding down their gullets.
Not unless there was a terrible new agency of death out there.
Chapter 2
His name was Remo, and he didn't look like a walking sanction.
In fact, he was the United States of America's ultimate sanction. He stepped off the plane at Sarajevo looking like a typical American tourist. Except for the fact that tourists don't come to the former Yugoslavia. No one comes to the former Yugoslavia. They only try to get out. Ethnic fighting had reduced the nation to the status of a Third World hellhole with former neighbors accusing one another of genocide, ethnocide, patricide, matricide, infanticide and even worse horrors.
At the bottom of the air-stairs stood a uniformed agent who directed Remo to customs.
"Where can I get a cab?" Remo asked him.
"After undergoing customs and baggage reclaim, you will find signs."
"I'm not carrying baggage."
"What? No baggage?"
"I travel light," said Remo, who was attired for shooting pool. He wore gray slacks, a crisp white T-shirt and Italian loafers that fit his sockless feet perfectly.
"You must come with me if you have no baggage."
"No," Remo corrected. "I must catch a cab."
"Why?"
"Because the quicker I catch the cab out of here, the quicker I can get the cab back to my return flight."
The uniformed man looked at Remo with unhappy eyes.
"When are you leaving Bosnia-Herzegovina, sir?"
"Four-thirty."
"You are in Sarajevo for only four hours? What is your business here?"
"My business," said Remo.
"You are reporter?"
"No."
"UN observer?"
"I heard the UN got chased out."
"They are forever trying to sneak back in," the customs official said pointedly.
"I'm not UN. If I had a safe area to protect, it wouldn't be overrun by a bunch of big-mouthed goons with guns."
The uniformed agent flinched. "You must come with me."
"If with you means to the cab-stand, sure. If not, go screw."
"Go screw what?" asked the agent, who was obviously unfamiliar with current U.S. slang. Actually, Remo's slang wasn't that current, but it usually got the point across.
"Go screw yourself onto a cactus and go for a spin," returned Remo.
The Yugoslav-Remo couldn't tell if he were a Serb, a Croat or a Bosnian-probably didn't know what a cactus was, but he knew an insult when he heard one. And he was convinced he had heard one. Even if he didn't exactly understand it.
"I am insisting," he said, his voice and spine turning to ice.
"Okay, but only this once," said Remo, changing attitude because he had been ordered to Sarajevo not to clean up Dodge, but to take out one Black Hat.
"Come with me," the man said, turning around like a man used to being obeyed.
In an interrogation room, they sat Remo down and surrounded him.
"Empty pockets, please."
Remo laid his billfold with its Remo Novak ID and approximately three thousand in U.S. bills and the folded article from the Boston Globe. He figured the money would distract them from the clipping. He was wrong. The Serb who detained him slowly unfolded the article. It was headlined A "Wanted" Poster That Leaves Pursuers Wanting.
"What is this?"
Remo decided what the hell. They didn't sound as if they were planning to let him go any time soon, and he had that plane to catch.
"It's the reason I'm here," he said nonchalantly.
"You are reporter?"
"Assassin."
"Again, please?"
"I'm here to nail one of the war criminals on the list."
"This is a reproduction of a Wanted poster for UN war criminals."
"That's right," Remo agreed.
"It is useless."
"Next to useless," Remo corrected.