"Destroyer - 011 - Kill Or Cure" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

‘Free at last,’ he sang, ‘Free at last.’ He danced down the steps, taking them not three at a time or four at a time, but all at a time, one leap like a cat and landing spinning.

But for his thick wrists, he appeared a very average man, somewhere near six feet, somewhere near average weight, deep brown eyes and high cheekbones—the plastic surgeon, by accident, returning them to almost what they looked like ten years earlier, before all this.

He pirouetted into the lodge lounging room where a frail Oriental sat in a golden kimono, his legs crossed in lotus position before a television set.

The Oriental’s face was as silent as glass, not even the wisp of a beard moved, not even the eyes blinked. He, too, looked like an ordinary man—an old, very old Korean.

Remo glanced at the set to make sure a commercial was playing. When he saw the soapsuds filling a tub and a woman being congratulated by her peers for a cleaner wash, he danced before the television screen.

‘Free at last,’ he sang, ‘Free at last.’

‘Only a fool is free,’ said the Oriental, ’and he, only from wisdom.’

‘Free, Little Father. Free.’

‘When a fool is happy, wise men shudder.’

‘Free. F. R. E. E. Eeeeeeeee! Free.’

Noticing that the commercial was fading into the storyline of As the Planet Revolves, Remo quickly removed himself from the viewing line of Chiun, the latest Master of Sinanju. For when American soap operas appeared on the screen, no one was allowed to disturb his pleasure.

Barefoot, Remo danced out into the spring mud of the Vermont countryside, delirious with joy. It was a ‘condition red’, and his instructions were burned into his mind by his ten years of waiting, since he had gotten his very first assignment

The bastards had just recruited him then, a Newark policeman, an orphan with no close friends who would miss him. They framed him for murder and sent him to an electric chair that didn’t work. When he woke, they told him they were an organization that didn’t exist; that now he was their enforcement arm who also didn’t exist, because he had just died in the electric chair. And just in case he should happen to bump into someone who knew him when, they changed his face and kept changing it periodically.

‘Condition red,’ Smith had said, before Remo left on his first mission, ‘is the most important instruction I give you.’

Remo had listened quietly. He had known just what he was going to do when he left Folcroft that first time. He would make a half-hearted attempt at the hit and then disappear. It didn’t work out that way, but that was what he had planned.

‘Condition red means,’ Smith had said, ‘that CURE has been compromised. It means that we are disbanding. For you, condition red means you should remove the compromise if possible. If not, run and don’t try to reach us.’

‘Run and don’t try to reach you,’ said Remo, humouring the man.

‘Or remove the compromise.’

‘Or remove the compromise,’ Remo repeated dutifully.

‘Now chances are I won’t be able to communicate with you under those conditions, at least not safely. So the code for condition red is calling you, asking for Aunt Mildred, and then saying I must have a very wrong number. Do you understand?’

‘Aunt Mildred,’ Remo repeated. ‘Got it.’

‘When you hear my voice asking for Aunt Mildred, you become the last hope of CURE,’ Smith said.

‘Right,’ Remo said. ‘Last hope.’ He wanted to get out of Folcroft and vanish. To hell with Smith, to hell with CURE, to hell with everybody.

It never worked that way. It turned into a new life. Years went by, names on lists, people he didn’t know, people who thought that guns were protection and suddenly found those guns in their mouths. Years of training—under Chiun, the Master of Sinanju—who slowly changed Remo’s body, mind and nervous system into something more than human: a man of years without tomorrows because when you change your name and your place of living and even your face often enough you stop making plans.

So it was over now and Remo danced in the sunshine. The air was good and clean; the new buds were fragrant on the hill. A young girl and her dog were standing by the silent chairlift being put into seasonal retirement. Vermont labor being what it was, the project was two months behind schedule.