Skin Deep

Remo considered. "Why?"

"I was born to an ancient and noble house. Dishonor would fall on the shadows of my ancestors if I were to be killed by a man with no weapons other than his hands."

"How would you do it?"

Wolfe held up his signet ring with the embossed spider design on the front. "Poison. I have carried it for many years. It will be quick, I promise."

He flipped open the gold spider top and stood staring into the hollow ring for some moments.

Remo stepped forward. "Is it powder?" he asked, thinking afterward that his question must have sounded flip at such a moment.

"No," Wolfe said, smiling faintly. "Acid," He hurled his arm at Remo, sending the liquid shooting directly toward him.

Remo ducked quickly enough so that the acid missed his face, but he felt the burn of the droplets on his back and shoulders. The cloth of his T-shirt disintegrated in huge holes, uncovering deep red marks on his skin. By the time he could stand upright, Wolfe was halfway out the door.

Remo caught him before he had taken another step. "Ancient and noble house," he said. He took hold of Wolfe's hand with its spider ring still on it and pulled slowly toward Wolfe's face.

The Nazi was panting, his eyes darting frenetically around the silent cave halls. "Who are you?" he whispered.

Remo looked him dead in the face. "I am Shiva," he said. "My line is ancient, too." And with that, he pressed the ring into Wolfe's forehead until the skull cracked. When he was finished, Wolfe lay alone in the empty hallway, his brain oozing from the back of his head. His eyes were wide and staring. On his forehead was stamped the red silhouette of a spider.

?Chapter Twenty-One

The sky was dark with the huge, low-flying shadows of the birds. The clearing, once filled with villagers, was empty except for the two figurs of Ana and Lustbaden, standing among the dead.

Ana's face was expressionless. She dropped the knife from her hand. "You have won, Zoran," she said. "We will all die now. I did not think you had the courage to give up your own life in order to kill us."

Lustbaden laughed, convulsive and maniacal. "But don't you see?" he said, tittering. "I won't die." He pulled a small vial of liquid from the breast pocket of his lab coat. "They will not attack me with this. Only you will be killed. You and the rest of your leper friends."

Seeing the girl's shock, he waved the vial at her tantalizingly. "But before you go, Ana, I wish to tell you a story. It's about the incident at Molokai. Your violation, my dear girl. By the gang of strangers. Remember that?"

He waited for a reaction from her, but the girl didn't move. He arched an eyebrow in mock commendation. "Better, Ana," he said. "There was a time the mere mention of it would have sent you into paroxysms."

"I no longer fear the past," she said.

"Good. Good, good, good. Because I wish to inform you, in the hour of your death, that the men who raped you were my men, SPIDER corps troops I had been gathering from all over Europe."

"What?" The color drained from her cheeks.

"I kept them on Molokai, outside the leper colony, where I knew the authorities wouldn't come. Through hypnosis, I trained your mind not to remember their faces. But they've been here with you all along, ever since that day in Hawaii." He laughed uproariously.

"But you— you found me," she stammered in a small voice.

"Naturally I found you," he said. "My darling, I was the first to have you."

She seemed to explode from within. "You!" she cried, picking up the knife at her feet and running toward him.

With remarkable deftness for a man his age, Lustbaden lunged forward and grasped her wrists. Then, with her hands struggling in his, he kicked her between her legs. The air whooshed out of her in a gust. She crumpled to the ground in a heap.

He unscrewed the lid to the glass vial. "Good-bye, Ana," he said quietly.

Suddenly a loud bang reverberated in the clearing. Lustbaden screamed, his face twisted in amazement as he looked at his left hand, which had held the vial. In its place was a broken shard of glass embedded in a bloody mass of tissue and bone.

Through his blurred vision, he saw a wisp of smoke lingering in front of one of the huts in the village. A man leaned in the half-shadow of the doorway, a Nazi Luger smoking in his hand.

It was Harold Smith.

"Nein!" Lustbaden shrieked above the noise of the oncoming birds. "Gott, nein!" It was a cry of rage and despair, the helpless wail of a man defeated on the verge of triumph.

"I won't kill you," Smith said. His face was bathed in sweat, the muscles of his neck straining with each word. "The birds will do that."

Lustbaden searched the sky, as if he remembered the birds' presence for the first time. He waved his arms at the flying killers above. There were hundreds of them, a blizzard of white beasts, mindless and lusting after prey. Lustbaden's arms, the injured one shooting off jets of fresh blood, fell to his sides in dull resignation. He looked like an old, old man.

"Not the birds," he whimpered. "Please. Don't leave me to them. Use your gun. Shoot. Please, Smith."

Smith looked pityingly at him. Thirty-six years. He had spent more than half a lifetime chasing this old man who begged for death.

He raised the Luger. Death was bad enough. But death by the birds would be slow and painful and terrible.

Lustbaden stood before him, trembling as he waited for the bullet. He covered his face with his bloody hands like a frightened child.

This was not the Prince of Hell, Smith thought. Like Zoran, the island deity, the mad genius of the war camps was just another disguise Lustbaden had donned to hide his insignificance.

Smith aimed. A shot in the head would be painless and swift. He squinted through the sight. His head was swirling again. At the end of the pistol's barrel he saw a face, Dimi's face.

There was Dimi, alone and white-haired, shuffling in his shabby room, remembering his wife and daughter and his twin boys. Had their deaths been painless, those children under Lustbaden's knife? Did the daughter, with her sea-green eyes, die easily when she tore the broken glass into her own arm? And what did Helena, the kindly wife who had given Smith soup and a blanket, feel when she was marched into the showers at Auschwitz and found a stone in place of soap?

Smith threw the gun to the ground. "No," he said. "I'm sorry for you. The end will be bad. But I owe a justice."

Lustbaden stood still for a moment, his shoulders slumped. His round face was streaked with blood. With a final glance at the sky, turbulent with the flapping of birds' wings, he tucked his exploded hand close to his chest and scrambled on his fat, short legs toward the rain forest, seeking shelter from the birds he knew would find him.

Smith went back into the hut and collapsed. Before he lost consciousness, it occurred to him that the birds would be coming for him, too, and for Chiun who had saved his life. Remo was probably already dead. And the plane would take off as scheduled. It was a sorry end for all of them, perhaps for all the world. A sorry end, senseless and mad.

In the darkness of unconsciousness that slowly enveloped him, he saw himself, as if from a great distance. He was weeping— for Dimi, for his family, for Remo and Chiun. Even for Lustbaden, the Prince of Hell, who was, after all, no more than a fool cursing in the shadows. And for himself, too, for the man with no answers. He wept for them all.

* * *

Remo ran toward the clearing at top speed. Overhead, the birds shrieked menacingly. Ahead, he saw Ana, standing alone and oblivious to the danger in the sky. Her face was starkly white, and she stood as still as a corpse, her hands crossed in front of her chest, as if preparing herself for death.

He reached her just ahead of the birds and pushed her into the hut. As the gulls descended, Chiun appeared from behind the hut, pale and trembling from his trance.

"Help me, Chiun," Remo said.

The old man took his place beside him in silence. Together, they waited for the birds.

The creatures dived in squadrons of twenty or thirty, their screams tearing through the sky. They dropped toward the two men, their beaks open, their talons unsheathed and poised like daggers.

Remo took the leader, snatching its claws and throwing the beast to the ground. But when the rest converged, he grabbed whatever he could in the snowy fluttering of wings. Sinewy necks, cold beneath their down, snapped in his fingers. The air was thick with their gamy smell. Remo felt a wave of nausea rise within him as the bodies of the birds mounted beside him, and he was puzzled that the killing of beasts seemed more like murder than the killing of men.

But these were not natural beasts. He could tell by their weight, by the uneven distribution of their masculature, that these animals had been bred to become the sharks of the air— hardy mechanisms of survival, genetically programmed to kill on command.

He was surrounded by hungry black eyes like buttons, seeking out his own eyes. Their yellow beaks jutted and stabbed, probing for his throat. Already his arms were cut and bruised from their attack, and the acid burns on his shoulders were torn open. He killed mechanically, thoughtlessly, discarding the limp flesh of the dead as he grappled with the living birds.

At last they thinned, and the sky showed blue again. A few escaped over the ocean, their shrill calls growing faint, until the clearing was silent.

The Valley of the Damned, Remo thought, looking over the bloodstained wasteland. Flies buzzed around the heads of the dead soldiers and lepers. The felled bodies of the birds lay in heaps over every inch of the clearing. The huts were closed and silent, their inhabitants hiding inside. The place was aptly named.

On the edge of the rain forest, Zoran Lustbaden's mangled body lay twisted and blood-drenched. His throat had been torn out by the birds, and two gaping holes where his eyes had been stared upward toward the afternoon sun.

"It is nearly finished," Chiun said wearily. A white feather dropped from his shoulder and fluttered onto Lustbaden's open palm.

There was not so much as a drop of blood on the old Oriental's robe. "Nearly?" Remo asked.

"The plane," Chiun said. "There is still time to stop it. It is the Emperor's wish."

In the distance, Remo heard the drone of the F-24's engine as it prepared for takeoff. "Oh, God, Caan, you crazy Jewish Nazi," Remo muttered as he headed for the airstrip.

He was too late. The stealth bomber, with its terrible cargo, was already taking off.

?Chapter Twenty-Two

Caan adjusted the oxygen intake valve on his helmet. He would be flying high above radar range, and the air would be thin. He looked straight ahead, out to sea, as the F-24 taxied swiftly down the airstrip.

The mission, he said to himself. Don't think of anything except the mission.

What was the mission?

Caan thought it over. Ah, yes. Brisket. Brisket and a starched lace tablecloth and pillowcases that smelled of lye soap. Rocking chairs and a Star of David and his grandmother...

"The mission," he said aloud, reminding himself. The films. The doctor. Heil Hitler.

"Don't forget, Richard. Never forget. Never..." His grandmother rocking, saying the words, again and again. Never forget. Nevernevernever. The wrinkled mouth opening as she rocked, talking soundlessly, the unknown words forming, talking, talking

"What are you saying?" He screamed, so loud that his voice cracked. Then he gunned the throttle and he was airborne, leaving the hateful old windbag in the dust behind him.

Remo reached the plane in time to take hold of its landing gear. The sudden burst of speed as the bomber climbed into the sky nearly threw him off into space, but he managed to hold on until the gear retracted. As it moved into the plane's body, he swung himself to get a foothold on the left wing, then propelled his weight in an aerial arc to land upright.

The wind was monstrous. At takeoff speed, even the aerodynamically perfect wings of the F-24 shimmied with the pressure. Remo felt the flesh of his face pulled backward with the thrust.

Slowly he crawled along the wing, his hands flat against the metal. It would be just like walking down a wall, he told himself, one hand after the other, supported by the toeholds of his feet, using his shifting weight and the vacuum created in his palms to keep himself attached to the surface.

But he knew it wouldn't be the same. It wasn't a wall, it was the wing of a jet roaring toward the speed of sound. And, too, the burns on his hands from the electric mesh of the cave prison hadn't healed. Fluid seeped from the raw flesh.

The pain shot through him as he reached the window beside the pilot's seat. Caan's face was comical in it s undisguised astonishment, but he was a good pilot. The plane never wavered. Instead, in the middle of its climb, Caan rolled it over in an aerobatic somersault and then dove.

Remo saw the earth turn upside down, its horizon curved in an upturned smile beneath him. The muscles in his arms were straining to their limit now, and his hands felt as though they were on fire. He wouldn't be able to stop the plane, he knew. There was only one chance open for him, and it was a million-to-one chance at that.

Wilhelm Wolfe had disclosed a crack in Caan's perfect indoctrination. "It only happens in his sleep," he had said. That was enough. It would have to be. With the last of his strength, he loosened one hand and pounded on the window. Caan looked over, his face frozen in surprise, as his plane continued its dive, trying to shake Remo loose.

"Nie wieder." Remo mouthed the words carefully. "Never again."

He watched the pilot's eyes flare in panic, his gaze darting around the cockpit as if seeking an escape. Then he turned away from Remo to face front. His hands shook like dry leaves, as he pulled the plane out of its plunge.

There was nothing more Remo could do. Releasing his one remaining handhold, he dropped the scant fifty feet into the sea.

* * *

She was back. Rocking, smelling of flour and sachet, the Star of David sending white light dancing on her face as she talked.

"Never forget, Richard..."

"Get out!" he cried, pounding at the controls in front of him. The plane dipped and veered, but the vision remained, speaking, the mouth opening soundlessly to utter the words that remained locked in the past, never to surface...

But the words did come. This time, when she spoke, he understood. He heard the words as clearly as he had on that night beside the gaslit fireplace when he was twelve years old.

She said, "Nie wieder." Never again.

The mission.

The president. The premier. New York City. The stealth bomber. The mission, the mission...

"Never again," he said aloud.

The plane swerved in a great circle in the blue coastal sky, its contrails billowing behind it like a ribbon of clouds. It whistled as it descended, sparks flying off its silver wings.

In the village far below, Chiun helped Smith limp into the clearing. "Behold," he said.

In the ocean, Remo turned onto his back to watch the spectacle of the pilot returning to the island. " 'Attaboy, Caan," he cheered. "Bring it in, kid."

But Caan had no intention of landing. His ears were filled with the music of an old lady's words as she sat rocking in the gaslight.

"Never again," he whispered as he flew the jet at full airspeed into Zoran's secret cave.

It exploded with a force that shook the entire island, sending down a rain of rock and earth and fire.

"Jesus," Remo said, averting his face.

Within minutes the cave was gone, the plane was gone, and Caan's remains were scattered to the winds.

The Valley of the Damned lay in stillness once again.

?Chapter Twenty-Three

Remo staggered into the hut exhausted and looking like a war casualty. Smith, his head and face patched with bandages, was sitting up, already penciling in notes on an old sheet of yellowed paper.

"Where'd you get the paper?" Remo asked.

"Ana. She left, by the way." He held the paper at arm's length and squinted to read his own writing without his glasses. "You'll have to find her."

"What for?"

Chiun, sitting quietly in the corner, motioned his head toward Smith and described a coil near his temple.

"She'll be a danger, I think," Smith went on. "You'll have to eliminate her."

His voice had the same lemony quality it had exhibited at Folcroft. His manner was crisp and businesslike. It was all too clear that his time spent in the valley had done nothing to soften him. "I'm arranging to have the villagers sent back to Molokai," he said. "I don't think any of them know enough about you or Chiun to make a case, and they'll be isolated in the colony. But the girl's healthy. With her brother gone, she's got no reason to stay with the lepers. Given what she knows, it will be too dangerous to have her walking around. She might go to the press, anything." He shook his head in a prim gesture, his pinched eyes never leaving the paper in his lap.

Remo shook his head. "You'll never change, will you, Smitty?"

The remark caught Smith off guard. Remo was right. He hadn't changed.

His eardrum was damaged and perhaps punctured, his throat was scarred, and he had aged enough in one day for a lifetime. But inside, in his secret thoughts, he was the same terrified man who had thrown up his arms in a silent plea to the wiry stranger on the fire escape in Warsaw so many years before.

He still had no answers.

His mortal enemy, his monumental obsession, had turned out to be a cowardly lunatic, unworthy even of a bullet to die by. A frightened old man.

So were they both, Smith thought, frightened old men.

There were no heroics left to him. That was as it should be, Smith decided. Let Remo, with his strength and youth, try to fight the world with his hands. It was his destiny.

But for Harold W. Smith, all that remained was a job to do, a job with no room for heroes and no answers for him.

"Do as I say," he snapped in his brittle twang. "Somebody has to do it."

He looked up. "Incidentally, it was reassuring to see you come out of the cave alive. Good... er, generally good work."

"Rat droppings," Remo muttered as he left the hut.

* * *

Ana was at the waterfall, where Remo knew she would be. She was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, her black hair swirling with the mist from the fall. In the half-light of the vanishing day, she looked like something out of a dream.

"Hello," she said.

"Hello." Remo sat down beside her.

"I want this to be as easy for you as I can make it," she said, not looking at him.

"What?"

"Killing me," she said. She laughed at Remo's look of surprise. "I'm not an idiot. I know you're some kind of special agent. You're too expert a killer to be an ordinary spy, or anything like that. My guess is that you and the old Master are a well-kept government secret. And Smith is a bureaucrat if I ever saw one."

"Close," Remo said uncomfortably.

"So?"

"So what?"

"Go ahead, Remo," she said gently. "I don't care what happens to me now. I'm not afraid." She looked out over the fall, waiting.

"Well, what if I don't kill you?" Remo said defensively. "What would you do then?"

She looked at him sadly. "Nothing. No plans. You wouldn't be sparing me for a life of glory." Then the sadness turned to anger. "Go on. Neither of us has anything to lose."

"How about the villagers? They've got something to lose."

She shrugged.

Remo stroked her hair. "Look, I know this has all been a rotten experience for you—"

"Don't analyze me!" she snapped. "Kill me, all right? Just do what you have to do, and go away."

"You're worse than Smith," he mumbled. "Hey, you really want me to kill you, don't you?"

"Yes!" she shouted. "I'm sick of death and disease and craziness." She buried her face in her arms. "Get it over with." Her shoulders trembled.

Remo put his arms around her. "What say you get some sleep," he said. "And when you wake up, then maybe you can think of a few things to do with your life."

"Like what," she said bitterly.

"Like going back to med school. You could really give these people a hand if you did."

Her eyes rimmed with tears. "They don't want me. I've brought them nothing but sadness and disgrace."

"I think you're wrong," he said gently. "They've saved your life more than once. Maybe you ought to return the favor."

Ana didn't answer.

"Smith's sending them back to Molokai, you know. You could go back to school in Hawaii."

Her eyes flashed for an instant. "Is that true? How would we get there?"

Remo cocked his head. "Darn," he said. "I'm supposed to kill you, remember?"

"Oh."

"But I don't think anyone'll notice if you're on the plane."

She looked at him for a moment, then turned away. "I'm so confused," she said.

Remo brought his face near hers. "Let me explain," he said, pressing his lips on her mouth.

She pulled away from him. "Is this the easy way?"

"Easy for what?"

"The easy way to kill me." She touched her fingertips to his face. "I know this is too bold of me, but I've wanted to kiss you since I first saw you."

"The thought crossed my mind, too."

This time she searched him out with her lips. "Don't be afraid to do it if you have to," she said earnestly.

Remo smiled. "With pleasure."

?Chapter Twenty-Four

On the shore of the island, Chiun helped Smith struggle into a dugout canoe given by one of the lepers.

His ear was still swathed in Chiun's silken bandage. He held it as he wobbled in the small craft. "I don't think this is leakproof," he said somberly.

"I shall see to your safe return, Emperor," Chiun said with a patient smile. Remo turned his back to keep his grin from showing.

"We have to travel over deep water in this, you know."

"Do not fear," Chiun said.

Smith wavered awkwardly in the canoe, then sat down with a crash. Chiun's robes billowed dramatically as he swayed on his toes to keep the vessel in balance.

"That does it," Smith said, watching the water splash around the sides of the canoe. "I'm calling the Coast Guard."

"How?" Remo asked. "Your portable phone's at the bottom of the ocean."

"Oh. Yes," Smith said. "Still, well need a bigger boat. There's only room for two in this thing."

Chiun looked the canoe over, appraising. "You are right," he said, folding his thin arms in front of him. Then, raising his index finger, he said, "Ah. There is a solution. Very easy. No problem whatever." He sat down in the canoe, a satisfied smile on his face.

"What's the solution?" Remo asked suspiciously from the shore.

"The only solution, O imperceptive one." He turned in an aside to Smith. "I am afraid, illustrious Emperor, that you will have to row, for I am an old man, and weary with the burden of my years."

"What solution?" Remo demanded.

Chiun looked up. "Why, you will have to swim back, of course," he said innocently.

"What?"

"You act as if I had asked you to swim the entire ocean. This is no more than an exercise."

"I don't need the exercise, Chiun."

"Did you stop the airplane?" Chiun shrieked.

"Aw, come on. It was already taking off when I—"

"You need the exercise," Chiun said. "Besides, you will enjoy the swim. There is a magnificent colony of tubeworms ten or twelve miles from here. Be sure not to miss it. Shall we go, Emperor?"

With a grunt, Smith took up the oars. "I hope you're not expecting me to row the whole way," he grumbled.

Chiun smiled benignly. "Just do your best, sire. I can ask for no more. To give you strength, I will recite some of the more beautiful verses of Ung, penned by the Master Wang himself. Good-bye, Remo."

"Good-bye, Remo," Remo mimicked as Chiun's Korean singsong faded out to sea. "Ingrates!"

Chiun sniffed. "Ingrates. He dares to call me an ingrate. Did I not point out to him where he might find the colony of tubeworms?"

Smith grunted. He did not like Chiun's complaints. Sometimes the poems were all right. If only they weren't in Korean.

Remo waited until the canoe with the two men was well out to sea. He could hear Chiun's voice across the clear water. He was declaiming an Ung poem, and Remo remembered it. It was about a bee who sees a flower open. It took four hours to recite, and if Chiun was interrupted during it, he insisted upon starting over from the beginning.

High on a cliff, beside the crest of the waterfall, Reno saw Ana silhouetted against the twilight sky. She moved her arms over the back of her head, so that her long hair rose and fell in a sensuous cascade. Her breasts were high and firm, her legs slender and strong. She saw Remo and waved and smiled.

To hell with the tubeworms, Remo thought as he headed up the hill leading to the cliffs.

Tomorrow was another day.

the end