The hard outline of his new cyanide pill was a strange and alien thing.
Finally, some rational part of his mind broke through the haze. He reached across the desk, picking up the interoffice phone. He punched the code that would connect him to the main desk.
"This is Dr. Smith. The new patient, Mr. Park, arrived back late yesterday. Please send someone to retrieve his manservant. Yes, I am aware of the hour. I need to speak with him about the patient's special-care needs."
Smith hung up the phone.
The walls seemed to be closing in around him. No. They were a million miles away.
Smith blinked. His eyes were hot. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.
"Forgive me," he quietly implored the shadows. Security. Everything was about security.
Leaning forward, Smith retrieved Miss Purvish's note from the floor. Smoothing it, he fed it through the special document shredder he kept at the side of his desk. It went through with a whir and was gone forever.
REMO NEVER THOUGHT he'd be relieved to be back at Folcroft Sanitarium. But after the weeks he'd spent in the wilderness, returning to civilization-even the CURE version of it-was a welcome change.
The guard at the main desk recognized Chiun as a patient who had gone on a brief sabbatical. When they returned in the afternoon, he called upstairs to relay the news.
No one seemed to care. There were no brass bands. Remo and Chiun were left alone in their basement quarters.
Remo was a little surprised when MacCleary didn't come down to see them. They had been out of touch for weeks.
Probably off on a bender somewhere. MacCleary liked his booze. At the start of his training just a few short months ago, Remo would have done anything to join him. But thanks to the Master of Sinanju, Remo's craving for liquor was almost gone. Not that he intended to become a teetotaler, but at the moment the thought of alcohol made him slightly ill. He was sure it would pass.
He took a long, hot shower.
Chiun even made him dinner. Some sort of disgusting mess made from brown rice and fish heads. It looked to Remo as if the Master of Sinanju had shopped for the ingredients from the Folcroft Dumpster.
But while the food was revolting, the portion was large compared to the subsistence meals he'd been allowed to eat in the Arizona desert. He ate greedily, drank water to his heart's content and went to sleep with a full belly.
He was awakened by a knock at the door.
There were two bedrooms in the basement quarters. Chiun used them both-one for himself, one for his luggage. He gave Remo a straw-thin sleeping mat and told his pupil to sleep out in the common room.
As the Master of Sinanju flounced out of his room to answer the door, Remo was sitting up groggily. "Kind of early to be delivering the breakfast garbage, isn't it?"
"The desert is only a few hours away by air carriage, O garbage mouth," Chiun warned.
Not wanting to go back to desert rations, Remo stilled his tongue as the Master of Sinanju opened the door.
An elderly Folcroft security guard stood in the hall. He spoke softly to Chiun for a few moments. Afterward the Master of Sinanju inclined his head to his pupil.
"What is it?" Remo yawned.
"Follow him," Chiun told him. He pitched his voice low. "And mind your manners."
Remo raised an eyebrow, but Chiun's mouth was sewn shut.
Remo pulled on his pants and T-shirt. Slipping his feet into a pair of sneakers, he followed the guard into the hall.
They took the stairwell to the administrative wing. To Remo, this had become "Upstairs," the nerve center of the CURE operation. He had never been up here before. MacCleary had told him that it was off-limits for him.
From the start he had a picture in his mind of walls of computer banks whirring away as harried G-men ran from room to room with armloads of files labeled Top Secret! Instead he found himself walking down a colorless hall that fulfilled its intended function precisely. There was nothing there that didn't look typical for a drab sanitarium.
He noted that there were no other people.
The guard's shoes clacked on the polished floor, echoing off the walls. A few times he looked back to make sure Remo was still following. It took Remo a minute to realize why. His own canvas sneakers made not a sound on the floor.
Remo found himself straining to hear his own nonexistent footfalls even as the guard ushered him into an empty office.
A brass plaque on an inner door read: Dr. Harold Smith, Director.
"Dr. Smith is expecting you," the guard said.
He went back into the hall, leaving Remo alone in the outer room.
Remo wasn't sure whether he should knock. He hesitated a moment before turning the brass knob. With the tips of two careful fingers he nudged the door open.
On the other side of the room a thin, middle-aged man in an ash-gray suit sat behind a big oak desk. His back was to Remo. He was staring out the window at the darkness and the moon-splashed sound.
"I'm Smith," the man said without turning. "I'm your superior. Please shut the door."
At first Remo didn't know how the man knew he'd even entered the room. The floor was carpeted and the door had swung open on silent hinges. But then he saw the reflection. Owlish glasses looked back at him in the big picture window behind the desk. The image was a little too clear. Remo realized it had to be some special kind of glass.
He did as he was told, pushing the door shut. On cautious, gliding feet he approached the desk.
The office was big but sparsely furnished. Yellow light from a banker's lamp arced over the desk's smooth surface. There were two telephones on the desk, both off to one side. One was black with a series of buttons. An interoffice line. The other was blue and had a simple rotary face.
A steaming white cup sat near the phones. Smith had brewed himself some hot water from Miss Purvish's coffeepot. The drooping tea bag was on its third use.
Smith continued to gaze into the darkness. "You should know most of what you need to by now. I will get you access to weapons, clothing and money. There are phone codes that you will need to memorize for contact purposes. There is identification already prepared for Remo Cabell. The first name was retained because your profile indicated that it was one of the few things you would not surrender."
Smith spoke without passion, without inflection. It was a simple dry recitation. Like reading a list of names from the phone book.
"Your cover will be as a freelance writer from Los Angeles," Smith droned on. "Your assignment calls for an-" he paused, his voice catching. When he finally managed to finish, the words were strained. "An elimination. The target is a patient in East Hudson Hospital in New Jersey. The man fell from a building yesterday. Probably was thrown. You will interrogate and then eliminate him. You need not worry about him being uncooperative. If he is alive and lucid, he'll talk to you."
Remo waited by the desk. He didn't expect his first assignment to be like this. Not that he really knew what to expect. But killing some poor schmo in a hospital bed certainly wasn't what he'd bargained for.
"Where do I meet MacCleary?" Remo asked. "He's supposed to go with me on my first assignment."
Smith's voice grew quiet. "You'll meet him at the hospital. He's your target."
Remo's breath slipped out. He stepped back a pace on the dingy carpeting. He couldn't speak. Shoulders steeling, the seated man finally turned. The chair let off a soft squeak. Eyes of flint gray stared up at CURE's new enforcement arm.
"He has to be eliminated," Smith stated firmly. "He's near death, in pain and under drugs. There's no telling what he might say."
Remo forced out the words. "Maybe we can make a snatch," he said. "Like he did with me." "Impossible," Smith insisted.
"It's too dangerous. He was carrying identification as a patient of Folcroft. I've already been contacted by the police in East Hudson where the fall occurred. There's a direct link to us now. I told them that he was emotionally disturbed. They seemed to accept that. They have closed the case as an attempted suicide."