Smith heard the whirring sounds of a small motor and the dry voice came closer. Smith suddenly understood that the wan was in a wheelchair. He remembered the handicapped decal on the back of the van.
"You don't remember." The voice was bitter, almost sad.
"That's correct," Smith said stiffly.
Smith heard a new sound then. It was a softer whirring, more like the muted sound of a dentist's highspeed drill. The sound made him shiver. He hated visiting the dentist. Always had.
The blindfold was swept from his eyes. Smith blinked stupidly.
The man in the wheelchair had a face as dry as his voice. It resembled a bleached walnut shell, corrugated with lines and wrinkles. The eyes were black and sharp, the lips a thin desiccated line. The rest of the face was dead, long dead. The teeth were stained almost brown, with the roots exposed by receding gums.
"I don't recognize your face," Smith said in a voice calmer than his thoughts. He could feel his heart racing and his throat tightening with fear. The man's features grew furious.
"My own mother wouldn't recognize me!" the man in the wheelchair thundered. He pounded a dead dry fist on the wheelchair's arm. Then Smith saw the blindfold hanging in the man's other hand.
But it was not a hand. Not a human hand. It was a three-fingered claw of stainless steel. It clamped, the blindfold that the girl had worn as an armband. Smith saw a black-and-white insignia distorted in the red folds. The steel claw opened with that tiny dentist's-drill whirring. The blindfold dropped on Smith's lap and he recognized the Nazi swastika symbol. He swallowed uncomfortably. He had been in the war. It was a long time ago.
"You have changed too, Harold Smith," the old man said in a quieter voice. "I can scarcely recognize you, either."
The steel claw closed noisily. Its three jointed fingers made a deformed fist.
"Modern science," the old man said. "I got this in 1983. Electrodes implanted in my upper arm control it. It is almost like having a natural hand. Before this, I had a hook, and before the hook, my wrist ended in a black plastic cap."
Smith's face was so close to the man he could smell the other's breath. It smelled like raw clams, as if the man's insides were dead.
"Fire did this to me. Fire took my mobility. It took my speech for many years. It nearly took my sight. It took other things too. But I will not speak of my bitterness any longer. I have searched for you, Harold Smith, and now I have found you."
"I think you have the wrong man," Harold Smith said softly.
"You were in the war? World War Two?"
"Yes," he said.
"He was in the war, Ilsa."
"He admits it then?" Ilsa said, She rose, clutching the Luger tightly.
"Not quite. He is stubborn."
"But he is the one?" Ilsa demanded.
"Yes, this is the day. I told you I felt it in my bones."
"We could tie him up and throw him in a ditch," Ilsa offered. "Then cover him with gasoline. Whoosh!"
"Fire would be appropriate," the man in the wheelchair said. "But I do not think I could bear watching the flames consume him. Memories, Ilsa. No, not fire. I must witness his death."
Harold Smith knew then that he would have to fight. He would risk a bullet, but he would not let himself be executed. Not without a struggle.
Smith came to his feet abruptly. He pushed the wheelchair back and narrowly ducked a vicious swipe of the old man's claw.
"Should I shoot him? Should I?" Ilsa screamed, waving her pistol.
"No. Brain him."
Ilsa swung at Smith's balding head with the heavy barrel of the Luger. But there wasn't enough force behind the blow and the gun sight merely scraped skin off Smith's head.
Smith grabbed for the gun. Ilsa kicked one leg out from under him and leaned into him. Smith fell against the swivel chair with Ilsa on top of him.
"Hold him there," the man in the wheelchair said. Smith, his head hanging back, saw the upside-down image of the old man advancing on him with the chilly whirring of machinery.
The steel claw took him by the throat and the dentist's drill sound filled his ears, louder and louder, reminding him of past pain, even as he felt the choking sensation that told him his windpipe was being crushed. His face swelled as his blood was forced up through the arteries in his neck. His ears popped, shutting out the drumming sound of his feet against the floor.
And all the time he could see the hideous old man's face staring at him, the black eyes tiny and bright in the middle of the red mist that seemed to be tilling the van's interior.
When the red mist completely filled Harold Smith's vision, he lost all conscious thought.
"Damn!"
"What is it, Ilsa?"
"I think he wet himself."
"They do that sometimes."
"But-not all over me!" She stood back from Smith's contorted corpse; looking like a woman who had heen splashed by a passing car. Her hands fluttered uselessly in the air.
"You can change later. We must leave."
"Okay. Let me lock you down."
"First get rid of the body."
"You don't want it?"
"No!"
"Not even for a souvenir? I thought we were going to skin him or something."
"Not him. He is not the one."
"He said his name was Harold Smith. I heard him."
"He is not the right Harold Smith."
"Oh no, not again. Are you sure?"
"His eyes are blue. Smith's eyes were gray.'
"Damn," said Ilsa, kicking Smith until his body rolled out the side door. She shoved the door closed on screeching rollers. "I thought you were sure."
"It doesn't matter. What is one less Smith? I am sure this one was a nonentity whom no one will miss. Drive, Ilsa."
Chapter 2
His name was Remo and he was building a house. Remo drove the last support into the hard earth. The post sank a quarter-inch at a time, driven down by the impact of his bare fist. He used no tools. He did not need tools. He worked alone, a lean young man in chinos and a black T-shirt with strangely thick wrists and an expression of utter peace on his high-cheekboned face.
Standing up, Remo examined the four supports. A surveyor, using precision equipment, could have determined that the four posts formed a geometrically true rectangle, each post perfectly level with the others. Remo knew that without looking.
Next would come the flooring. It was important that the floor of the house sit well above ground level, at least eight inches. Like all houses in Korea, Remo's home would sit on stilts to protect it against rainwater and snakes.
Remo had always wanted a home of his own. He had dreamed of one back in the days when he lived in a walk-up flat in Newark, New jersey, and pulled down $257.60 a week as a rookie cop. Before his police days, Remo had been a ward of the state and bunked with the other boys at St. Theresa's Orphanage. After he was suspended from the force-after they killed him-there had been a succession of apartments and hotel rooms and temporary quarters.
He had never dreamed that one day he would build his house with his strong bare hands here on the rocky soil of Sioanju.
Two decades ago Remo had been sent to the electric chair on a false murder charge, but he did not die. Remo had been offered a choice: work for CURE, the supersecret American anticrime organization, or replace the anonymous corpse that lay in his own grave.
It wasn't much of a choice and so Remo had agreed to become an agent of CURE. They turned him over to an elderly Korean named Chiun, the head of a fabled house of assassins, and Chiun had transformed Remo Williams into a Master of Sinauju, the sun source of the martial arts.
Somewhere along the way, Remo had become more Sinanju than American. He did not know when it had happened. Looking back, he could not even pinpoint the year. He just knew that one day long, long ago he had stepped over that line.