"Huh?" she persisted, clawing at his chest. "Tell me what you want iii your mouth. I'll give it to you. I'll give it to you good, honey. Oooh."
"Well, actually, I was thinking about rice. And maybe a little duck." He worked his fingers up to her thigh.
"Oh, duck!" Her head flailed wildly, whipping cascades of red hair into Remo's mouth. "Duck, oh, duck, baby," she yelled, frothing and shaking Hke a mad thing.
As she lay panting and sated, Remo listened to the little gurgle of hunger in his stomach. He silently cursed Chiun for developing him into a man whose major preoccupation in a woman's bed was a bowl of rice.
"You've certainly got some funny bedroom patter, Remo."
"Sorry."
"Don't apologize, darling. It drove me wild. I felt Hke you were so—so real."
"Uh huh. Suppose we could talk about the missing chaplains?"
"I'd rather talk about us."
"Okay. What do we know about the missing chaplains?"
She sighed. "Men. You're all alike. Just worried about getting your rocks off. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's sexual selfishness."
"Okay, then, forget it," he said, throwing his legs over the bed. "It's been swell."
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"You mean you're not coming back?"
"We don't seem to communicate."
"They're being killed off by the recruits. Now get back in here."
"Why?"
"Because they're the wrong religion. Do it to me again, Remo lover. Lay that duck stuff on me."
"What's the right religion?"
"According to the men, some traveling evangelist a.few miles out of town. I was going to check it out tonight. Services are at eight. Go to it, Remo. Down this way." She led his hand to her inner thigh, where he had left off.
"What about the others who've been getting killed? I saw somebody murdered today."
"I guess they're the wrong religion, too," she said. "Look, if I had this thing all sewn up, I wouldn't be down here investigating. That's all I know, so sock it to me."
"Later," Remo said, gliding into his trousers. 'Tve got to get to some duck before church tonight."
Randy sat up abruptly, teeth bared. "Why, of all the cheap, no good, low down, male chauvinist . . . Ooooh."
Remo had slid his hand to a spot just to the right of her spinal column and pressed two nerves together until they locked in exquisite pleasure. "There," he said. "That'll hold you for an hour or so, until the nerves relax. Then you'll fall into a gente sleep. So long."
"Duck," she rumbled, beating the mattress with her fists. "Duck, Remo. Oh, duck." * * *
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si, M
I
11 id
Remo finished his duck and changed into the black T-shirt and tan chinos he had bought at the airport. They were identical to the clothes he'd worn the day before, but working assassins weren't paid to hang around laundromats, so he bought new clothes whenever he had the time to change.
That was the deal Smith had made him more than a decade before—all expenses for the remainder of his working life, and all the spending money he wanted. What Smith didn't tell him was that men who don't exist don't need a lot of money. Flashy clothes and jewelry would only be an encumbrance; buying a car would be a waste of time, since he'd had to abandon every car he'd driven since he began wofking for Smith; and he would never be able to own a permanent home or raise a family. Chiun was the only family he had ever known, or would ever know.
He looked at himself in the mirror on the wall of the motel room where he was staying. He realized, with a little surprise, that he possessed the kind of face women would find attractive. The high cheekbones, the deep-set brown eyes, the firm mouth—it was a better face than the one he had been born with. Less vulnerable looking, perhaps. The Brazilian plastic surgeons Smith had hired the first time Remo's identity had been compromised had been skillful and experienced, with an eye for masculine beauty.
The lean body was unrecognizable from the one Remo had when he was a young policeman, before his training with Chiun began. That body had been fleshy and muscular. This one was deceptively thin. Only the unusually thick wrists—a genetic "flaw"
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that had become a great asset in climbing and fighting—remained.
Still, he wondered, who was Remo Williams? Gone, as forgotten as an obscure line from an obscure play. Would he have been happy living as a normal man with normal weaknesses, with friends to swap lies with and a woman to love? He would never know.
He turned away. Mirrors always brought out the fool in him. Who needed mirrors, anyway?
The phone rang. "Yeah," he said. The wire was silent but for strained breathing at the other end. "Who is this?"
"Vadassar," came the strangled response.
"Who?"
"Montgomery," the voice managed.
"General? Is that you? What is it?"
"Vadassar. The recruits. Zombies . . ." The general's voice was weakening. "They're—" He gasped, choking for air. "They're going to kill us all," he said. Then Remo heard the receiver drop to a hard surface, and there was no more sound.
What he found at Fort Wheeler resembled the Vietnamese villages he'd seen during the war. Bodies were everywhere, their bellies slit open, their heads blown away, littering the base grounds like broken toys. The only sound Remo could hear was the eerie, faraway howling of coyotes. As he stepped over the corpses, Remo noticed that almost all of them wore the uniforms of top officers.
The administration building was worse. The mutilated remains of human beings who evidently had been going about their daily work were strewn over
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the stairwells and on the floors, now slippery with blood. Clipboards and brown-spattered sheets of paper lay scattered beside them. An open elevator exposed the fragments of its last passengers, who had been grenaded out of existence until they were no more than bits of flesh and cloth dotting the walls. Through each open office door he saw the dead, grotesquely murdered, the looks on their faces all expressing surprise and fear.
General Montgomery's secretary sat spread-eagled on her typing chair, her arms flung back, her head hanging backward from her body, supported by. only a few strands of flesh. The general himself had been shot through the abdomen, with an automatic rifle. A thick trail of blood and ripped intestines led from near the door to his desk, where the telephone he had used for his final message dangled from its cord.
Remo picked up the phone and dialed the seven-digit code number to Smith and waited for the routing connections.
"Yes," Smith said very quietly, sounding more shaken than Remo could remember ever hearing the vinegar-blooded New Englander.
"There's been a bloodbath at Fort Wheeler," Remo said. "Mostly officers. They're all dead. Nobody else seems to be around."
There was a pause at the other end of the phone. "I was afraid of that," Smith said. "The same thing has happened at the other bases where the disappearances have taken place. The-pattern's been continued. It's madness." •
"I may have a lead, Smitty. What's the name Va-dassar mean to you?" "Vadassar? Let me check." Remo heard the click
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of buttons and the electronic garble of Folcroft's immense computer hookup in action. Then silence. "Nothing," Smith said. "Vadassar, you Said? Let me try variations on the spelling."
More buttons. More silence. "No. It doesn't compute."
"That's funny. A general here who was murdered today called me before he died. The last thing he said was 'Vadassar.' "
"Maybe it's an anagram. I'll work on it. Meanwhile, there's nothing left for you to do there. Get over to Fort Borgoyne. If this horror is spreading, it'll strike there next. And hurry. This is monumentally important."
For an instant, Remó remembered the legend in his dream. A monumental force from the West will seek to destroy Shiva.