"But the woman in the cemetery looked like Freya," Remo said dully. "She said if I found her resting place, I would find my father. How do you explain that?"
"It is a fantasy, Remo. All your life you have wondered about your parents. You created fantasies about them. What you saw that night was just the manifestation of one such fantasy. This is reality. I am your father and Maude is your mother."
"If that's so," Remo said hotly, "why did she dump me on the doorstep?"
"Er, this is awkward," Smith began.
Remo grabbed Smith by his coat lapels and pressed him against the wall. "Talk, Smitty."
"Mrs. Smith had an affair during my absence. She thought the baby-you-had been fathered by this other man."
"What other man?"
"I do not know. She did not identify him."
Remo let go. "This is crazy!"
Smith straightened his coat front stiffly. "She could not face me with a baby of uncertain parentage," he said, "so she abandoned him. I only wish I knew then what I know now."
"I wish I didn't know any of this," Remo said, throwing up his hands. "It's crazy."
"Remo, I know this is hard ...."
"This is stupid. I've met your wife. She's dumpy as an old sofa, a frump."
"Remo! " Chiun admonished. "Do not speak of the emperor's consort so!"
"No way that's my mother!"
"There is no escaping the truth, Remo," Smith said testily. "I wish you would take the blinders off your eyes."
"And you're not my father."
"There is the possibility of that. Mrs. Smith has grown convinced over the years that I am the father to the baby, but there is no proof. This other person remains a possibility."
"Him, I'll accept. You, never."
"But Mrs. Smith remains your mother."
"That will take a blood test, chromosome test and the word of God Almighty to convince me," Remo snapped. "And maybe not even then."
"We will have to deal with this later," Smith said quickly. "I believe I have set in motion events that will eject the Internal Revenue Service from the Folcroft picture."
"What'd you do, call for an exorcist?"
"No. I wove a web of truth and prevarication for Dick Brull's benefit. If it works, we should see results very soon."
"I'll believe that when I see it, too. The IRS are worse than leeches."
"Remo," Smith said, "there is something else you should know-"
A drumming came from the stairwell.
Doom doom doom doom...
Turning, Remo said, "I don't know what's making that racket, but I want a piece if it."
And he was off down the green corridor like an angry arrow.
Chapter 32
Big Dick Brull had just assembled his agents in Dr. Smith's office when the muffled drumbeat returned to haunt him.
"There are still some patients running around loose," he was saying. "Get out the nets and get them back into their rooms. Other than that, until I get to the bottom of this, don't touch anything, don't seize anything and most of all don't do anything"
Doom doom doom doom. . .
"There's that sound again," Agent Phelps said unhappily.
"Damn! Everybody out into the corridors. Before I surrender this seizure, I gotta know what's making that racket."
Big Dick Brull followed his agents from the office.
"It's coming from the stairwell," an agent cried, pointing to the nearest fire door.
"Let's go get it!" Brull snapped. "Surround it! Don't let it get away, or it's your asses!"
A rushing knot, the agents raced to the fire door.
Two hands reached for the latch bar. The door exploded off its hinges in their faces.
Big Dick Brull stumbled back in the face of the reverse stampede of IRS agents.
The drumbeat was suddenly all around them.
Doom doom doom doom doom doom doom...
That was when they got a clear look at the author of the incessant sound.
A HUMAN BULLET, Remo Williams catapulted down the corridor, every sense focused on the elusive sound of a beating drum. He whipped around the corner like a slingshot, saw nothing and let his Sinanju-trained senses carry him after the sound.
His senses took him to the stairwell fire door. Remo spanked it out of his way. It blasted off its hinges and went cartwheeling down the concrete stairs.
Remo went over the tubular rail, alighting on the next landing a split second ahead of the tumbling steel door. Whirling, he batted it away. It went over the rail to crash far below.
The drumming continued down the stairs. Remo jumped again. The second-floor landing absorbed the shock to his powerful leg muscles.
Out of the corner of one eye, Remo caught a glimpse of something pink. It was low to the floor and moving toward the green wall. But when he whirled, there was nothing. Just wall.
Chiun's squeaky voice called down. "Remo! What have you found?"
"I don't know," Remo called back, "but it's on the other side of this wall, whatever it is." He hit the fire door.
The door came off its hinges as if hit by a highpressure fire hose. It struck something meaty and flopped flat.
Remo jumped over the squirming plate of steel from which arms and legs waved helplessly. His heels went click on the floor when he stepped off.
IRS agents were still recoiling from the flying door, their senses not quite taking him in, when Remo spotted the pink creature.
It was barely a foot tall and stood on its hind legs looking up at him, a tiny drumstick in each paw. In alternating rhythm, it was beating the toy drum strapped over his potbellied stomach. It looked up at Remo with a confident, almost bemused expression on its whiskered face. One floppy velour ear dropped doubtfully.
Then it spun in place and started back toward the stairwell.
Big Dick Brull shouted, "What the fuck was that thing?"
"It's the Polarizer Bunny, what does it look like?" Remo snapped, jumping after it.
"That's what I fucking thought it was," Brull said in a disbelieving voice.
Remo chased the plush pink cartoon bunny back up the stairs. The bunny had short little legs, but it wasn't using them. Yet it took the steps as if it was on wheels and the staircase was a flat ramp.
Coming down the steps, the Master of Sinanju saw it scooting back up. His hazel eyes exploded in astonishment.
"Remo! Do you see this thing?"
"I not only see it, I plan to wring its little pink neck. I hated those commercials!"
"I will catch it," said Chiun, squatting down to gather up the speeding apparition in his long-nailed hands.
Beating its drum, the bunny twirled, reversing itself.
"I got it," said Remo.
"Do not hurt it, Remo!" Chiun squeaked.
"No promises," said Remo, lunging low. His hands came together like a vise. But when they clapped together, there was no bunny.
"Where did it go?" he blurted, looking around.
"It is between your legs, blind one," Chiun squeaked.
Remo looked down. He brought his heels together with a hard final click.
The bunny was not where Remo's heels met.
Remo blinked. He was fast enough to pace a car, snatch an arrow in midair or dodge a bullet. No way was a battery-powered windup bunny rabbit faster than him.
"I will catch it," Chiun repeated. "Come to me, 0 annoying rodent. I will not harm you."
There was no chance of that. The bunny scooted between the Master of Sinanju's sandals like a ray of pink-colored light, all the time pounding on its toy drum.
Doom doom doom doom...
Chiun gave out a shriek of pure frustration.
"What'd I tell you?" said Remo as they raced up the steps after it.
It led them out into the psychiatric wing once more, past the cell rooms and Harold Smith's gray-and-shading-to-bone-white face, to the ladder leading to the roof hatch.
The bunny was not equipped to climb a full-size ladder. Not with its legs permanently bent and its hands full of drumstick.