Never Say Die

Chapter 18

“Cloning?” Harold Smith sounded incredulous. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“No way,” said Remo. “It’s the only answer that makes any sense, considering the circumstances.”

“But we are years away from cloning human beings. Maybe decades.”

“I suppose that all depends on who you mean by ‘we,’” said Remo. “I think Radcliff and Eugenix pulled it off.”

“With Thomas Hardy?”

“Right.”

“But that is—”

“Impossible?” asked Remo. “How else do we manage to explain the faces and the fingerprints? These shooters don’t just look like Hardy—they are Hardy.”

Smith considered that for several silent moments. When he spoke again, he sounded weary, like a runner in the last mile of a marathon. “So, you imagine that he has found a way to take…material from Hardy’s corpse and use it somehow to impregnate women? That is the angle on Ideal Maternity?”

“It looks that way to me,” Remo confirmed. “All the talk about adoptive homes and surrogates was bullshit. Radcliff had his so-called unwed mothers giving birth to Hardy time and time again. He gets rid of the women afterward, and starts the whole thing over with another batch.”

“The clones we have seen—if they are clones— were in their twenties, Remo. That would mean—”

“That Radcliff’s been producing little monsters since the early 1970s. That’s right.”

“It will not hold up,” Smith said. “There is nothing in the research to suggest that criminal behavior is genetic. Certain types of mental illness, granted, but there is nothing to support a claim that Hardy was insane. Hit men are not born, they are made.”

“Which brings us to the doctor’s home for boys.”

Smith saw where they were headed, and the view did not improve his mood. “Some kind of school for homicidal maniacs,” he said. “Is that the theory?”

“Not at all. You can’t control a maniac. What Radcliff needs is trained professionals. The kind you get from years of training and emotional conditioning.”

“Like boot camp.”

“Starting from the cradle up,” said Remo.

“The place would need some kind of license,” Smith retorted. “There would be inspections and evaluations, gossip by employees and deliverymen. He could not hide that many clones or pass them off as twins and triplets.”

“First of all, we don’t know how many he has,” said Remo. “Six, for sure, and no one’s saying he produced them all at once. Radcliff had thirteen girls in Dogwood, all at different stages of their pregnancies. Let’s say, at peak production, he can count on six or seven clones a year. They’re no good to him till they’re old enough to pass as adults, and it takes that long to train them, anyway.”

“Still—”

“Let me finish. Formal education doesn’t start until the age of five or six, and I’d be very much surprised if any supervised facility could get away with taking children much below that age.”

“Which means—”

“He’s got another place to stash the infants, right,” said Remo. “Let them cut their teeth on war toys, watching Scarface on the VCR, whatever. I suppose we’ll have to try and squeeze someone to find out where it is.”

“And when they are old enough—”

“He sends them to the boys’ home, maybe keeps them separate from the other kids, some kind of special classes. I don’t know. Inspectors come around, they see the usual. If they run into any little Thomas Hardys, even two together, it could be explained. It wouldn’t happen often. Anyway, inspectors come and go. I’d guess that some of them are more agreeable than others.”

“What about the regulars?” Smith asked. “The normal boys?”

“There’s bound to be a number of legitimate adoptions,” Remo speculated. “The rest would be cut loose when they become adults, at age eighteen. Radcliff would need security to keep them separated from the clones, but if a boy got curious and saw too much, it’s easy to arrange an accident or have him disappear.”

“Another teenage runaway,” said Dr. Smith.

“Exactly. With an orphan, my guess is that no one bothers looking very hard. The cops would file some paperwork and then forget about it overnight.”

“And Radcliff’s operation would be subsidized by income from the state.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“You will have to prove it, Remo.”

“Which is why I’m going in.”

In a town the size of Ekron, it had not been difficult to pin the boys’ home down. They called it the Fairfield Home for Boys and it was situated on a ninety-acre tract of woodland east of town.

“Do you expect resistance?”

“With the way it’s gone so far,” said Remo, “I expect most anything.”

“I will wait for your report,” Smith declared, and cradled the receiver.

“I do not understand this cloning,” said Chiun when Remo laid the handset down.

“I’m not sure anybody does completely. Little Father. If the theory works, it means that you can take a piece of tissue from an animal, or man, extract the DNA and raise a perfect duplicate of whatever or whoever you started with. I understand some labs have had a fair bit of success with sheep and monkeys, that kind of thing.”

“So, there could be another Chiun?”

“In theory,” Remo said. “Of course, the body’s only part of it. Your clone would not inherit memories or skills. He’d have to go through all the education, training and experience that you’ve absorbed throughout your life to make a perfect duplicate—and even then, I guess, there could be room for some emotional discrepancy that altered his behavior.”

Chiun was scowling at a distant point in space. “Why was I not informed of this?” he asked.

“Nobody really believed it could be done on human beings. Hell, I could still be wrong. Smith thinks I’m crazy.”

Chiun replied, “The pot is calling the kettle black. Still, that does not mean he is necessarily correct.”

Was that a compliment or Chiun’s contrariness? Remo wondered.

“Anyway, I’m out of here. I have to check the so-called boys’ home,” Remo told him, glancing toward the road map that lay open on his bed, with route and destination marked in felt-tipped pen. “I’ll see you.”

Chiun folded his hands inside the sleeves of his silk kimono. “Come back quickly. I weary of waiting.”

The lineup of infomercials was never less than captivating, but the Master of Sinanju found it difficult to concentrate on the blaring set, even when he switched over to a noxious sitcom. His mind went back to Remo and the riddle of a dead man who would never truly die as long as bits and pieces of himself were frozen in a lab somewhere, available for transmutation into embryos. What marvels could have been achieved if such technology had been available in bygone ages! Why, Master Ung the poet could still be penning verses of sweet perfection. Death would lose all meaning, in effect, and if that meant assassins had to do the same job more than once, what harm was there in being paid to kill the same man two, three, even six or seven times?

Would such a killer who had generations to prepare himself challenge Remo? Chiun didn’t think so. But since the guinea pig and scientists were all American, they would attach the usual importance to such implements as guns, grenades and knives, neglecting the refinements of a true assassin’s art. It also helped that they were clumsy—Remo had killed four of them so far—but he was no immortal, for all his skills. When he met them next, there could be six or seven times as many, better armed, better, prepared.

Would that number of identical men confuse even a full Sinanju Master?

Chiun blinked at the commercial that was playing. On the TV screen, a mother and her daughter—indistinguishable by their ages—occupied a blanket in the middle of a meadow bright with flowers. From the wicker basket and array of home-cooked food, Chiun knew they must be on a picnic.

Eyes downcast, the daughter spoke. “I have to ask you something, Mom…about those special days. I’ve tried the pads and tampons, but they just don’t do the job.”

“These will,” her mother answered with a smile, and reached into the open picnic basket for a brightly colored box that might have held a dozen cans of beer. “I always keep a few of these around for special days. They’re more absorbent, and—”

Chiun switched the television off, disgusted with himself. It was a sign of weakness that he did not have sufficient faith in Remo to complete this particular mission unassisted..

Still, a new threat had manifested itself. These so-called clones. Remo might resent Chiun for interfering if it turned out to be a relatively simple mission. But if it was more than that…

Chiun stood up, went to the closet, where his lone steamer trunk was standing in a corner. He was changed in seconds flat, his green kimono traded for a black one. There was nothing else that he required.

Harold Smith had taken several hours to locate all the legal paperwork on the facility called Fairfield Home for Boys. Of course, it helped that he had known the town to start with, and there weren’t that many orphanages in the neighborhood of Ekron, Kentucky, but Smith was intent on proving Dr. Radcliff’s personal connection to the place before he unleashed Remo on the staff.

In fact, the orphanage was owned by Fairfield Mutual, a paper holding company that was itself controlled by something called Security Unlimited. That company, in turn, was owned by Quentech International—a firm created and controlled by Dr. Quentin Radcliff.

It was evidence enough for Smith, more than enough for Chiun and Remo. Quentech owned the Family Services Clinic in Brandenburg, and also held the title to Ideal Maternity.

Case closed.

When he was ready, Chiun paged through the telephone directory and found a number for the taxi company located nearest to his lodging. Thirteen minutes later, he was settled in the back seat of a battered yellow cab, giving directions to a sweaty driver several times his size.

“Ekron!” the driver snorted. “Are you kiddin’ me? That’s close to thirty miles, one-way, and then I gotta come back empty. There’s no way—”

“How much?” the Master of Sinanju asked him.

“Huh?”

“How much?” Chiun enunciated carefully, as if conversing with a mentally retarded child.

“Well, jeez, let’s see… A trip like that would run you sixty—more like seventy—and with the tip…” Chiun reached across the driver’s meaty shoulder, dropped a pair of crisp new hundred-dollar bills into the man’s lap, and sat back in his seat.

It was only paper money after all.

“Step on it, if you please,” the Master of Sinanju said. “And do not spare the horses.”

“Is everything in place?”

“I guarantee it,” Morgan Lasser said. “We’re set for damn near anything.”

“Damn near?” The tone of Quentin Radcliff’s voice was skeptical.

“Well, you know what I mean.”

“Enlighten me,” Radcliff demanded.

“Right.” Annoyance showed in Lasser’s face, but he wasn’t about to argue with the man who held the purse strings. “Let me see…we’ve doubled up on personnel and hardware—all discreetly out of sight, of course—and visual surveillance is on-line around the property. Eight monitors and forty cameras on staggered, overlapping, seven-second sweeps. The chance of anybody getting through is…well, you can forget about it, Quentin.”

Dr. Radcliff frowned at the familiarity but let it pass. “You’re saying it’s impossible for anyone to penetrate the compound, then?”

“To penetrate the compound unobserved,” Lasser corrected him. “You didn’t give us time to throw a wall around the place.”

“Are you implying this is my fault, Lasser?”

“No! Hell, no! I meant—”

“Because the only bungling I’ve observed these past few days has been on your part.”

Lasser bristled. “That’s not—”

“You’ve lost seven soldiers so far, I believe, and four of those were on loan from Project Lazarus. So far, we don’t have anything at all to show for it.”

“You gave me clearance on the drones,” said Lasser, angry color showing in his face.

“Because I thought you knew what you were doing,” Radcliff countered: “Thus far, it seems I was mistaken.”

“Look, the problem is—”

“I’ve heard the problems,” Radcliff interrupted him. “You can’t identify the enemy. You don’t know where he is or where he comes from, how he manages to kill armed men without a weapon of his own. You don’t know what his motives are or how to stop him. It would seem,” continued Radcliff, almost sneering, “that you don’t know much of anything.”

The others turned away from Lasser’s fury, Garrick Tilton staring at his wingtip shoes, while Warren Oxley took a sudden interest in the nearby trees. “That’s damn unfair!” said Lasser, fighting to control his rage. “We’ve never let you down before.”

“How many failures does it take to constitute a pattern, Morgan? Jasper Frayne. Devona Price. The Dogwood Inn. Ideal Maternity.”

“We got Frayne, dammit!”

“And you sacrificed one of my children in the process,” Radcliff answered. “Which, I have no doubt, has led directly to the present crisis.”

Morgan Lasser, as the reigning honcho of Security Unlimited, bore ultimate responsibility for any failures in the field. No matter how he tried to shift. the blame around, regardless of the logic shoring up his arguments, he grudgingly admitted to himself that Dr. Radcliff had a point. Somebody had to be responsible, and since he couldn’t even name their enemy, that somebody was him.

“You’re right,” he said at last, and barely recognized his own strained voice. “We’ve dropped the ball a few times, granted, but we’re back on target now. You won’t be disappointed this time, Quentin.”

Dr. Radcliff stared at Lasser for a long, still moment. Confidence eluded him, but he was certain he had made his point. If there were any more mistakes by Lasser or his cronies, Radcliff was prepared to cut them loose and punish them accordingly. Meanwhile, it was to his advantage if Security Unlimited could solve the problem that was threatening to ruin his life’s work.

“I want to see the monitors,” he said. “Then we can have a look around the grounds.”

“Sure thing,” said Lasser, putting on a smile devoid of human warmth. “If you’ll just follow me…”

They were a small parade, crossing the close-cut lawn, with Lasser leading Dr. Radcliff, Oxley bringing up the rear with Garrick Tilton. Three decades of painstaking research, breaking new ground in genetics, opening the frontiers of established science, and it all came down to this. His life’s work—and his very life itself—depended on a pair of thugs who were, from all appearances, stuck in the middle of an epic losing streak. Still, they had served him in the past and might again if they were able to derail his present enemies.

Who were they, dammit? If the FBI was after him, where were the suits and warrants, the United States attorneys with subpoenas for the next grand-jury hearing? Dr. Radcliff was familiar with the law, from years of trying to avoid it, and he knew damn well that no American police force worked this way, attacking in the dead of night—or in broad daylight, for that matter—killing trained hit men without a shot fired at the scene and leaving their remains to be discovered by whoever came along. It smacked of cloak-and-dagger operations from the Cold War days and made him wonder if his rentals overseas had brought some vultures home to roost, but which among the governments he had frustrated in the past could organize such an efficient operation? None of them, thought Radcliff. They were all inept.

Of course, he had innumerable enemies. They were intimidated and infuriated by his genius, knowing the discoveries he made would put their feeble efforts in the shade for all eternity. It was amazing, Radcliff thought, that he was even still alive. From personal experience, he knew assassins could be found for any job, in every price range, and the jealous bastards who had tried to block him all his adult life would ultimately stop at nothing to destroy him, wreck his plans or claim his monumental breakthroughs as their own.

He did not fear them yet. If anything, he could admire their raw efficiency.

Which left him with a mystery that Radcliff feared might prove insoluble. The way his unknown adversaries operated, here and gone without a witness, only dead men left behind, he could be next to feel the hand of Death upon his shoulder.

He had taken every possible precaution, spent his life preparing for this moment, and he would not be defeated, robbed of all that he had worked for in three decades, by a total stranger. When the chips were down, his children would protect him.

He was sure of it.

They reached a building fabricated out of cinder blocks and separated from the boys’ home by a thirty-yard expanse of grass and trees. When state inspectors came to call, at six-month intervals, they were impressed that Dr. Radcliff laid out so much money for security, to keep the children safe from prowlers on the grounds. Of course, they only saw eight cameras in operation, rather than the forty now engaged—a number that would probably have struck the most enlightened social worker as excessive for an orphanage. But then, they never saw the gun room, either, or the backwoods training ground where Radcliff’s drill instructors, hired away from the U.S. Marines and Army Rangers, put his children through their paces.

It was just as well. The state would never understand his special ones, or why they needed combat skills in order to survive. The crowd at Health and Human Services would certainly have terminated Radcliff’s funding—not to mention calling the police—if they had known what he was up to, how his grand discovery had found a practical and profitable application in the daily world.

Man was a killer, plain and simple, but the fact remained that certain members of the species were too squeamish, or too “cultured,” to perform the dirty work themselves. They needed trigger men who were professional, dependable and absolutely guaranteed to keep their mouths shut—even to the point of self-destruction if captured. Quentin Radcliff filled that need, with no apologies to anyone, and if he made a handsome profit at it, who could say he didn’t earn his money? It was another hallmark of his genius, that he saw a need and filled it. One more in a series of his great gifts to mankind..

Dr. Radcliff had learned to love free enterprise almost as much as he loved science. Put the two together, and you had a winning hand. In days to come, when he was duly recognized as mankind’s, savior, he would reap the full reward that he deserved.

“So, here we are.”

The bank of television monitors showed bits and pieces of the grounds—a curious, insectile point of view when they were taken all together. Morgan Lasser started tapping buttons, switching cameras, and Radcliff soon lost interest in the slide show. One part of the woods looked pretty much the same as any other, shrunken down and filmed in black and white. He felt a moment’s sympathy for anyone assigned to sit and watch the—

“Wait! What’s that? Go back!”

Radcliff stabbed a shaky index finger at the second monitor, top row. There had been something—someone?—moving on the screen, a sprint from one tree to another, furtive, but the scene had come and gone before he had a chance to focus.

“What? Which one?” asked Lasser, visibly confused.

“That one, you dolt! Go back!”

Two keystrokes, and the camera panned across a wooded glade, no sign of life apparent.

“But I could have sworn…”

“Let’s try a couple of the other cameras,” Lasser said. “Remember, we’ve got interlocking fields of vision.”

Two more clicks, and Lasser froze the camera, focused on a man who stood, peered straight into the lens, then ducked his head and kept on going, out of range.

“Who’s that?” asked Radcliff.

“I don’t have a fucking clue,” said Lasser, reaching for a compact walkie-talkie on the desk in front of him. He brought the handset to his lips and pressed the button to transmit.

“All stations, listen up!” he snapped. “We have a male intruder on the grounds, incoming Sector Five. Proceed to intercept. Detain for questioning, if possible, but terminate if he seems likely to escape. Let’s move it, people. This is not a drill!”

It was perhaps not the best way to go, Remo thought, but he’d created a situation they would have to deal with now. Otherwise, he was concerned that Radcliff’s people would evacuate the so-called orphanage before he had a second chance to look around, and Remo would have lost his last real chance to prove his theory of the Thomas Hardy killer-clones.

They would be waiting for him mow, of course, but waiting was not necessarily the same as ready. Three guns had been waiting for him at Ideal Maternity, as well, but he was still alive and they were not. He could expect a stronger, more determined opposition this time, but they weren’t Masters of Sinanju.

He stayed alert for any sign of sentries or booby traps as he navigated through the woods. There was another camera up ahead, which he could hear whirring on its pivot, but he got around that one by waiting for the lens to turn in one direction while he scampered in the other.

Simple.

Even knowing he was here and roughly where he was, the other side would have to work their asses off to take him down.

Too bad the woods were sparse on this side of the ground, he thought. There was sufficient undergrowth to cover him if things got hairy, but it would have given him a greater edge if he could leave the ground behind, take to the trees and make like Tarzan for a while, avoiding both the cameras and any foot patrols that came along.

Still, he was on the scene, and the security devices told him he was getting closer to the object of his quest. A wiser man than Dr. Radcliff might have had the orphanage evacuated at the same time he was clearing out Ideal Maternity, but Remo gambled on the supposition that events had overtaken Radcliff in a rush, compelling him to face one aspect of the problem at a time.

He hoped so, anyway.

If Radcliff had been smart and swift enough to clear the boys’ home, Remo could be wasting precious time.

And something told him there was little left to spare.

He knew approximately where the major buildings were, from driving past the Fairfield gates on Webster Road, a short mile east of Ekron. Moving on, he had picked out a narrow service road and found a place to hide his car before he started in on foot. Most of the ninety acres would be woodland, and he estimated that the orphanage would be located closer to the nearest road than to the back half of the property.

So far so good, until he saw the camera—and it saw him.

He kept on moving, knew that it would be a grave mistake to hold his ground and wait for trackers to come looking for him. He was conscious of the cameras now, could keep them guessing to a fair degree, but the opposition had to know where he was headed. No one would assume that he was out there for a simple Nature walk.

He saw the orphanage about the same time, that the first patrol experienced their fleeting glimpse of him. A shout confirmed their presence after Remo heard them coming through the trees, away to his left front. Four men, the faces identical, except that two seemed slightly older than the others.

Different generations, Remo thought. Death without end.

He was already ducking, moving, when they opened fire with automatic weapons and the bullets started whispering around him, sizzling through the air.