Feast or Famine

No one ignored the Master of Sinanju without penalty. Not even the emperor of the wealthiest empire of the modern world.

Chapter 20

At FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virgina, Edward E. Eishied received a strange inter-Bureau e-mail message signed ASAC Smith.

He had heard of Assistant Special Agent in Charge Smith. He had never met him. But Smith was an FBI legend. It was said he was a retired agent given special investigative status by the director. It was also said the faceless Smith was really a cover for whoever sat in the director's chair, going back to the halcyon days of Hoover. J. Edgar, not Herbert.

No one knew for sure. But everyone knew that whether it was a cross e-mail message or the man's graham-cracker voice on the line, what Smith said went.

In this case, it was an e-mail. The text read, "Require psychological profiles on unknown subject. See attachment for details. Needed ASAP."

Eishied snapped to attention. This was his meat. He had worked every serial-killer case from Ted Bundy to the Unabomber and he had nailed the essentials of every psychological profile he ever undertook.

The weird part was Eishied knew of no case not already under active investigation.

He sat back, expecting to find details of some horrific new killer of the ritualistic type.

Instead, he read the incoming data and slowly slumped in his seat.

"This is a test," he muttered. "No, it's a joke."

But ASAC Smith had no reputation for humor. In fact, by reputation he was the most button-down SOB in the Bureau hierarchy.

Downloading the file, Eishied went at it. It was going to take some real brainpower to profile this guy. He picked up the telephone and speed-dialed the Chicago office.

"Ralph? Eishied here. I need your assist on something."

"I was just going to call you. I just received the weirdest request from no less than ASAC Smith himself."

"Does it involve killer bees?"

"Yeah. You on it?"

"Just downloaded the file into my machine. The question is, are we supposed to work together or independently?"

"My guess is that Smith's looking for every pristine angle."

"Okay, no communication until we turn in our reports.

"Good luck."

"Same to you," said Eishied, then hung up.

As he fired up his laser printer for generating a hard copy, Edward Eishied muttered, "I sure hope we come up with the same profile ...."

Chapter 21

Tammy Terrill had never seen anything like it.

"What is with you people?" she complained to the L.A. chief of detectives.

"We're not prepared to give a statement at this time," he returned.

"I gave my statement to you!"

"That's different. You're a witness. You're obligated to give your statement."

Tammy stared at the transcription of her statement, which lay on Chief of Detectives Thomas Gregg's desk, along with a pen so she could sign it. They were in a brightly lit interrogation room in the downtown L.A. police headquarters. It looked nothing like the interrogation rooms Tammy had seen on TV. It was too nice.

"If you don't give me an interview, I won't sign that," she warned.

Chief of Detectives Gregg eyed her with no flicker of emotion. He didn't look much like a cop, though he talked just like one. He was too tanned to be a cop, and his hair was too sun bleached. Even for a California cop.

"Gary, have Miss Terrill here held as a material witness."

"You can't do that!"

Gregg looked Tammy dead in the eye the way a bird looks at a worm. "We need a signed statement or we need you. What's it going to be, Miss Terrill?"

Tammy signed the statement. "This is under protest."

"Just spell your name right," Gregg said woodenly. They had all been like that, wooden and unemotional, when they had descended upon the L.A. County Morgue and sorted through the bodies.

Tammy had tried to get their theories on the case before they got too busy.

"We just got here," Gregg had said.

"I saw it all," Tammy told him. "It was killer bees. Ask him. He's big on bugs."

At that point, Dr. Wurmlinger introduced himself and threw cold water on Tammy's new lead. "I confess I have no explanation for what has happened here," he said in a helpless voice.

"Tell them it was killer bees. You know it was killer bees. I know it was killer bees. Just tell them."

Wurmlinger looked as lost as a termite on plastic. "The bee that stung them could not have killed them. Other than that, I am at a loss for an explanation," he said.

After that, Tammy and Wurmlinger were separated and taken downtown. There, Tammy told them everything she had seen to the point when Dr. Krombold had succumbed, finishing with, "It stung me, too, but I have the skull of a crockery pot, so I didn't die."

Chief of Detectives Gregg seemed unimpressed by any of it. He just asked methodical questions and expressed doubt only when Tammy failed to identify her cameraman by name.

"They're so...common," she explained. "Like they're pod people, or something."

Now, with her statement signed, Tammy was being released. Out in the corridor, she hunted up Wurmlinger. He was coming out of another interrogation room and looked as lost as a cockroach in an hourglass.

"Hi."

"Hello," he said dispiritedly.

"Time for our interview."

"The police asked me to make no public statement."

"I'm the media. We outrank the cops."

Wurmlinger shook his long head slowly. "I am sorry. I must return home. I have had a very trying day."

"It's about to become the greatest day of your life. Because you're about to become Fox News Network's resident bug expert."

"No."

"Just think of it!" Tammy said, throwing her arms wide. "Your face will be telecast from coast-to-coast. You'll be famous. You'll be asked to lecture. Hey, maybe you'll even get a date or two."

Wurmlinger winced. "Goodbye," he said, exiting the building.

Tammy watched him get into a cab and overheard him ask the driver to take him to the airport.

Tammy whistled up a cab and gave her driver the same instruction.

There was no way she was going to lose her story now.

WURMLINGER WAS so preoccupied that Tammy had no trouble trailing him to the American Airlines counter, where he offered his return ticket to a clerk.

After he left for his gate, she barged into line and accosted the same reservations clerk.

"I need to go where that tall drink of ugly is going."

"Brownsville, Texas."

"Right. Texas. I'm going there."

The reservations clerk cut her an open-ended return ticket to Brownsville, Texas, and Tammy loitered at an adjoining gate until the last boarding call came. She slipped aboard and took her seat without being noticed by Wurmlinger.

At Brownsville, she was one of the first off the plane, which put her in a position to grab a cab before Wurmlinger collected his luggage.

The cabbie wanted to know where she was going.

"Just get me out of the airport, and I'll get back to you," Tammy told him, snapping open her cell phone.

She dialed Clyde Smoot in New York.

"What is Dr. Wurmlinger's address again?"

"Didn't you find him?" Smoot asked.

"I'm on center stage in something bigger than 'X-Files.' Just give me the address, Clyde."

After it hit her ears, Tammy repeated it to the driver, and he gave the cab real gas.

"This," Tammy said, "is the way to cover breaking news."

Chapter 22

Remo Williams was walking the halls of Castle Sinanju in North Quincy, Massachusetts.

He was bored. There was nothing to do. Chiun was closeted in his private room doing God alone knew what while Grandma Mulberry-or whatever her name was-haunted various rooms like a cantankerous Korean ghost.

Remo avoided her at all costs, but it was hard. She roamed from room to room dusting and cleaning and cackling to herself. Chiun claimed she was singing an old Korean love song. To Remo, it sounded like a hen cackling.

At six o'clock, he checked in with the local news. Since Chiun was busy, that meant Remo could watch the newscaster of his choice. That meant Channel 4. The other two channels both boasted a reporter named Bev Woo. They were not the same person. It was a local oddity that created no end of problems for Remo if they had to watch any Woo. Chiun insisted on watching the dumpy, middle-aged Bev Woo, whom he had dubbed the incomparable Woo. Remo preferred the lithe and chipper Bev Woo, whom Chiun detested. But since he had a real choice, Remo went with the third option, Channel 4, where a new Asian anchorette with the unlikely name of Dee-dee Yee held sway.

It turned out to be a slow news day. A drunken car crash led the top of the news. A record-sized blue shark had been captured in a Kingsport fisherman's net, and the weather for tomorrow was promised to be "springlike." Since this was New England, that probably meant rain. Maybe even hail. Brimstone was also possible.

At the end of the broadcast, the anchor said goodbye, and the station immediately cut into a bumper that rehashed the lead stories the station had recapped two seconds earlier, adding, "Tune in at eleven for details."

"Why do they always do that?" Remo muttered. Increasingly, it seemed that the news had more teasers for the next segment or the next newscast than hard news itself. He wondered if there was some kind of plot afoot by commercial advertisers to hook America into watching what was fast becoming a perpetual, round-the-clock newscast. On second thought, maybe they saved more money teasing than reporting.

Then he remembered he had a fourth option. The Fox News Network.

The Fox report started with an update on the is-there-life-on-Mars? controversy and segued into a story about an Iowa corn farmer who claimed a "windless wind had devoured his crop."

"Are space aliens responsible for these mysterious events?" the reporter intoned. "Stay with Fox News for the other side of the news. The news the other networks dare not tell. Fox is committed to tracking down the stories no others will report. For news, think Fox."

There was nothing on the killer-bee story or the strange serial coroner deaths on both coasts. And no sign of Tammy Terrill. Remo wondered if maybe she had succumbed to delayed bee-sting shock after all.

Bored, Remo decided to rattle Chiun's cage.

"Hey, Chiun. You busy?" asked Remo, knocking on the door.

Chiun's querulous voice came through the panel. "Go away!"

"What do you mean, go away?"

"Go away. I am improving my mind."

"You're what?"

"Reading a book," Chiun explained.

"All right. All right. Sheesh."

After that, Remo decided to go for a walk.

He happened upon Grandma Mulberry, who stuck her tongue out at him and said, "Good riddance."

"Who said I was going out?" growled Remo.

"You wearing kiss-me-pretty-boy face," she tittered.

"That's it! I'm getting a room."

"Better than crouching in bush with other faggots," she taunted.

"Remind me to string you up in the nearest tree for a scarecrow," Remo snapped.

Grandma Mulberry then bestowed upon Remo a very respectable Bronx cheer. She sounded like old buzzard with stuttering gas.

On the way out, Remo noticed a book lying on the kitchen table. It was entitled The Joy of Astral Sex. Curious, he opened it up.

A quick scan showed it was some kind of New Age self-help book. Most of it concerned instructions on how to achieve an out-of-body experience. The rest focused on finding the proper disembodied sex partner, and how to do it the ectoplasmic way.

"It's the only way the old bat's going to get any," grumbled Remo, who rolled the book into a tight cylinder and fed it into the garbage disposal with grim glee.

He found himself walking along Wollaston Beach a few minutes later. The wind was flattening the gentle ripples of Quincy Bay, and in the distance Logan Airport's squat concrete control tower showed clearly.

There was no getting around it. He would have to move. Strangling the old bat was out of the question. Chiun would make his life even more miserable than she did. There was no way he was going to win. And he still didn't understand why Chiun had hired a housekeeper in the first place. They had gotten along fine, just the two of them, for more years than Remo cared to count.

It would be hard to live apart from the old reprobate, but it was either that or put up with snide insults for the rest of his days.

Remo was so intent on his thoughts he didn't notice the auburn-haired woman until she practically stood in his path.

He looked up. She had long shimmering hair and wore a look that would make a Boston cop flinch. She was pretty. No, wait. Make that gorgeous. Her eyes were warm and brown, and she was wearing a blue spring dress that hugged her body like fresh linen. She looked young yet mature. Fresh but seasoned. Her face was radiant, but without that dewy look very young girls possessed.

"Excuse me," Remo said. "I didn't see you." He started to walk around her.

Shifting, she got in his way again. "You look bored," she said.

"That's me," admitted Remo.

She looked him dead in the eye. "Fine. Marry me. "

Remo said, "What?"

She waved a ticket. "Look, I just won the lottery. Mass Millions."

"Good for you."

"And I quit my job."

"Congratulations."

"But I'm bored."

"It's a long line," said Remo, "and I was ahead of you."

She got in his way and fixed him with her striking eyes, which were growing steely. "Did you hear anything I just said?" she demanded.

"I have stuff on my mind."

"I just won seven million dollars and I'm free as a bird." She smiled. "And you look like my kind of bird."

"Sorry. I fly alone."

"Don't tell me I'm not your type. I know different."

Remo decided she was crazy and turned on his heel, walking the other way. She followed along, growing more insistent. She had the slightly husky voice of a former smoker. That was a strike against her in Remo's eyes. He didn't care for smokers.

"I don't have a type," said Remo, wondering if the shark effect was wearing off. He found if he ate shark every other day, it quenched his powerful pheromones.

"Look, I'm not kidding about winning the lottery. It happened last week. See, this is the winning ticket. I'm afraid to turn it in. So I come here and try to think. Aren't you even slightly impressed?"

"I have my own problems," said Remo.

"Look, if you won't marry me, how about a date?"

Remo blinked. He stopped in his tracks. A cunning gleam grew in his deep-set dark eyes.

"I gotta take you home to meet someone first," he said quickly.

Her voice took on an edge. "If it's your wife, I withdraw the offer."

"No. Come on."

They walked back to Castle Sinanju. She told Remo her name was Jean and she had six kids and one grandson. "No two alike," she added.

"You don't look that old," he said.

"I'm not. I was just testing your nerve. How is it?"

"Holding up."

"You're doing better than most guys I meet. For some reason, guys are intimidated by me. Puts a big damper on my love life." Her smile turned sly. "By the way, how's yours?"

"Ever hear of astral sex?"

Her eyes bloomed. "You can do astral sex? I thought I was the only one who knew that stuff."

"I just read about it," Remo lied. "What's it like?"

"You lie in separate beds, sometimes separate homes. You never touch in the physical sense. But your souls mate."

"Is it good?"

"It's transcendent. Did I ask you your name?"

"Remo."

"I'm half-Italian, so we should get along just fine. Assuming you believe in prenuptial agreements."

"I wouldn't ask the woman I was going to marry to sign one," said Remo.

"You got it backward. I'm the one who hit Mass Millions."

"Oh. Right."

"Anyone ever tell you that you're a little slow sometimes, Remo?"

Remo nodded. "You'll meet him."

Grandma Mulberry met them at the door, took one look at Jean and said, "Do not fall for his act. He is a faggot."

Jean burst out laughing. "She's cute."

"She's not the one I want you to meet," Remo growled.

"Oh, I think she was."

They found Chiun in the bell-tower meditation room. The Master of Sinanju looked rested and bright of eye on his reed mat. Without skipping a beat, he said to Jean, "You are very beautiful."

"Thank you."

Remo broke in. "That's Chiun. Chiun, this is Jean. We're talking about getting married."

"If you marry for money, love cannot fail to follow."

Remo blinked. "I know this is kinda sudden but-"

Chiun lifted a long-nailed hand. "You have my permission to wed. I bless this union."

Remo blinked more rapidly. Jean laughed out loud, a happy, infectious sound.

"May you bear my adopted son many squawling infants," Chiun said expansively.

"Don't you at least want to know her heritage?" Remo asked.

"A good thought," said Chiun. "Child, what is your father's last name?"

"Rice. My name is Jean Rice."

Chiun brought his deceptively delicate hands together, and his face assumed a rapturous expression. "You will be an excellent influence upon my wayward son, who has sowed his wild oats for too long now. It is time he settled down to a steady diet of rice. Even if it is white rice."

"We haven't set a date yet," Remo said quickly.

Chiun arose from his mat. "There is no need. I am prepared to marry you now."

Remo stepped back with nervous speed. "Wait a minute! What's the rush?"

"You have made the decision. It is done. As head of the House, it is my duty to join you in matrimony."

Remo started backing out of the room.

"But first you must know certain things about my adopted son, Remo," added Chiun.

"Shoot," said Jean, folding her arms.

"He is a fearsome killer."

Jean cocked an eyebrow. "Him?"

"Yes. Second only to myself. Many enemies of this country he has slain in cruel and merciless ways. For we secretly work for no less than the emperor of America."

Jean eyed Remo. "He's funny. I like him."

"He's a pain in the butt," returned Remo.

"He's using reverse psychology, you know."

"I am not," Chiun flared. "If no one objects to this union, I pronounce you assassin and consort."

"Wait a minute. I object," Remo said.

Jean wrapped one arm around Remo and said, "Too late. We're wed."

"I hardly know you. And this is just a date."

"Don't sweat it. I'm rich. I'll support you."

Chiun's eyes narrowed sharply to conceal their growing merriment.

"Look," Remo sputtered. "I just met her. I thought I'd use her to get that old bat off my back. I can't walk by her and she makes a crack about my masculinity."

Face reddening, Jean released Remo and stepped away.

"You were just using me!" she said, her voice squeezing down in shock.

Remo caught himself. "I didn't mean 'using' like that."

She grabbed his arm again. "So we can get married, after all."

"You are married," said Chiun.

"No!" said Remo.

"If you jilt this woman who loves you, Remo, it will bring shame to the House," Chiun scolded.

Remo grabbed Jean by the hand and dragged her down the stairs. Her laugh bounced off the walls. Remo, visibly annoyed, fumed until they were out of the building.

Once outside, Jean looked up at the fieldstone monstrosity and said, "If we end up living here, I want some changes."

"Don't get ahead of yourself," Remo growled.

She looked up at him, her eyes appealing. "You weren't really using me?"

"I need to get that iron-haired scold off my back."

"Uh-huh. Let's go back to the beach. You look like you could use a good smooch."

"I'm a little rusty in the romance department," Remo admitted.

She took his hand. "I have just the cure for that ...."

Chapter 23

The first psychological profile came by e-mail.

Smith's system beeped to alert him of the incoming transmission from the FBI Chicago office. Smith hadn't expected a report this soon, although he knew the Bureau profilers were very good at this sort of task.

The text report was succinct to the point of ridiculous:

UNSUB is antisocial type. White male, age about thirty-five, intelligent, detail oriented and keeps bees. Probably had an ant farm as a child and fell into fantasy world inhabited by insects. Lives in isolation. Minimum to no social life. Drives Volkswagen Beetle. Follows the Charlotte Hornets.

Smith input the text into his own profile generator and commanded the program to generate a rough artist's representation of the UNSUB.

Moments later-the speed of modern computers still sometimes astonished Smith, who had cut his analytic teeth in the halcyon days of Univac-a color image appeared.

It showed a nearly featureless white man, bearded, but wearing dense wraparound sunglasses and a deerstalker cap.

Smith blinked. The system had generated a face that was a cross between Sherlock Holmes and the Unabomber.

Obviously, he was working with insufficient data.

Saving the image as a file, Smith returned to the task at hand. Perhaps one of the other profilers would do better. After all, profiling was not an exact science ....

Chapter 24

Midway through dinner-Remo had ordered mako shark out of habit-he realized the merry look in Jean's eyes wasn't there because she had won seven million dollars courtesy of the state of Massachusetts, but because she was in love with him.

Not lust like most women, but love. It had been a gleam in her eye from the first, but now it was open and unconcealed.

"So," Remo said, putting down his fork, "what's the attraction? It can't be my pheromones. They've been pretty quiet lately."

She smiled. Her lips were very red. They went with her eyes somehow.

"Last summer, I had my Tarot cards read," she said, leaning forward. "Guess what the woman said."

"Search me."

"'You're coming into money.'"

"They all say that."

"It came true, didn't it? Now shut up and listen. Then she flipped a couple of cards over and said, 'I see you on a beach. There's a man walking the beach with his head down. Dark hair and dark eyes. He has unusual energy.'"

"That could be anyone."

"'And wrists like two-by-fours.'"

Remo's knife and fork froze in midair. "She said that?"

Jean nodded. "Her exact words. So when I saw you, I knew exactly who you were."

Her smile lit up her crinkling eyes.

"Who am I?"

"Let's just say this-there's still time to run."

"I don't run from anything," said Remo. But his dark eyes were worried.

They drove to the beach and walked its entire length and back again. A cold moon came up and washed them in its pristine light.

They were still there when the sun rose.

Chapter 25

If Mearl Streep hadn't had the misfortune to be christened Mearl Streep, a lot of things might have been different.

For one thing, he wouldn't get all those annoying telephone calls at all hours asking for an autographed picture of himself in drag.

For another, he'd still be teaching the fifth grade.

Mearl Streep's rise to fame changed all that. Between the calls at night and the scrawls on the blackboard of James L. Reid Grammar School in the daytime, Mearl Streep had been practically drummed out of polite Iowa society.

In the beginning, it was only miserable. Then his brother passed on, and Mearl inherited the family farm. That made it bearable. Nobody cared what a simple corn farmer called himself.

But Mearl's heart wasn't in corn. It was in being somebody, and being Mearl Streep was a plain losing proposition.

"How the hell do I get me some respect?" he asked his dog, the only companion he had who didn't snicker behind his back.

Old Blue barked a time or two and lay down and began snoring.

"Life is against me. That's all there is to it," he muttered.

Old Blue rolled over and passed gas.

"And if it's against me, then by damn, I'm going to be against it," Mearl said firmly, fanning the air with his seed cap.

It was one thing to blow off steam on a farm in the middle of the Corn State where no one cared. It was another to keep doing it. Mearl got tired of listening to his own complaints and took to listening to the radio.

There were some pretty interesting new personalities on the radio during the good days before the Great Flood. First there was Thrush Limburger. He really got the blood coursing. But after a while, he started sounding more and more like an eastern windbag, shifting with the changing political winds.

Others came. They went, too. Louder, more feisty than the ones before. After a while, all the sound and fury died down and there was nothing good on. Nothing for a hardworking but bored corn farmer to listen to.

Then interesting things started happening. Ruby Ridge. Waco. Folks were talking about how Washington was going to be moving against the people pretty soon, and some of the loudest voices in radio started disappearing. Folks blamed bad ratings, but Mearl wondered. It sounded vaguely sinister. So Mearl bought himself a shortwave set and took up listening to Mark from Minnesota, a program devoted to warning folks about the coming insurrections with the black helicopters and the New World Order and suchlike.

Not four months after Waco, came the Great Flood of 1993. The hundred-year flood, they called it.

It wiped out Mearl Streep. He barely escaped the moving wall of black puddinglike mud that rolled over his farm after the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers overflowed in the wake of a four-hour goosedrowner of a rainstorm. Eight dirtdrumming inches fell. A crest of water twenty-seven feet high rolled off the Raccoon and ran smack into the swollen Des Moines.

From that tumultuous collision, it spread out in all directions like a cold wrath of the Almighty coming to clear off the earth.

That night, Mearl sat on high ground in his red Dodge pickup and listened to Mark from Minnesota proclaim God's honest truth.

"This so-called flood was no act of God. God don't flood the farms of God-fearing people. This was Washington. They are experimenting with their weather-control devices and figure the best people to try it on are farmers. What do farmers know? They get rained on, droughted on and hailed on all the time. They'll get over it. Well, listen my brothers out there in the heartland. Don't get over it. Get even. You who are organized into militia, get ready. Those who aren't, what are you waiting for?"

"By damn, what am I waiting for?" Mearl asked himself over the relentless hammering of raindrops on his truck roof.

Thus was born the Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia, led by Commander Mearl Streep.

At first, no one wanted to join. There were no militia in Iowa. It was a peaceful state and folks were too busy cleaning up the black mud and trying to get back to normal to join anything but the unemployment line.

When the first unemployment checks ran out, Mearl started doing business. First, all he had was a squad but before long, he had himself an honest-to-God unit.

They trained in the deserted cornfields taken over by the banks. If they happened upon a banker, sometimes they used him for target practice. It was only fair. An eye for an eye. An ear for an ear. And Mearl wasn't talking about corn.

For three years, Mearl had drilled his men, and trained them to prepare for the black helicopters that were certain to fill the skies when zero hour came.

No one knew when zero hour was, but he was all but certain it would take place on April 19.

"Why April 19?" a new recruit asked, as they invariably did.

"That was the hallowed date of the shot heard round the world, in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1775. That's when the First American Revolution started. In 1991, another shot was taken against tyranny at a place called Ruby Ridge on the same date. Two years later, also on April 19, the battleground was called Waco. These events turned the tide against the new tyrants so bad that on April 19, 1995, they created a diversionary tactic, blowing up that federal building in Oklahoma City.

That was the turning point. Everything after that is what we called AO-After Oklahoma. We are now at war with our own unlawful government. And we gotta drill for the next April 19 or bend our proud backs under the iron boot of Washington."

Two entire April 19s passed without incident.

Then they came. Exactly on time.

First it was the Garret cornfields. Stripped by what was described as a wind that wasn't a wind.

"What was it?" Streep demanded after rushing to the scene in his camouflage uniform on the latest April 19.

"It sounded like a cross between a tiny twister and a locust swarm," Gordon Garret himself had told him.

"Sounds like Washington to me."

"I don't know what it was, but it bankrupted me," Garret said dejectedly.

"Then you might want to take a gander at this," said Mearl, pulling an IDSM membership form and introductory booklet from the cargo pocket of his cammies.

Garret read right along.

"That'll be thirty dollars, your first quarter's dues," Mearl added.

"I'm flat busted."

"No man is busted who marches with the Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia," promised Mearl Streep.

The twister from hell had hit other farms, too. Not all of them in a straight line. A number were skipped.

"Collaborators," muttered Mearl. "That proves Washington's behind this. No storm or swarm picks its targets. Look at this."

They looked. Everyone saw it plain. It was as if some supernatural thing had taken random bites out of the waving green prairies and fields. But the bites weren't random. Any farm that was hit was completely destroyed. Those that were spared were absolutely untouched, not an ear as much as nibbled on. In his mind, Mearl saw them as collaborationist farms. And there were more of them than there were of the downtrodden. A whole lot more.

"We gotta take the fight to the enemy now," Mearl exhorted.

"To Washington?"

"We are gonna take Washington back for the Godfearing people," promised Mearl Streep. "First we gotta put the fear of God into Washington."

Chapter 26

When Remo returned home with the dawn, Grandma Mulberry met him with a disapproving expression and a short, pungent oath.

"Slut."

"You're pushing it, you old bag of bones. Nothing happened."

"Not mean redhead, but you. Out all night. Shame on you. Tomcat slut."

Remo inched closer. "You know I can break your neck like a twig?" he said in a low growl.

The old woman sneered back. "Master Chiun bounce your butt over moon if you do."

Remo's teeth met with a click. His hands floated up as if they had lives of their own. They hovered at choking height.

Catching himself, Remo dropped them to his sides.

"Give me a second," he told Jean, who observed the entire exchange in silent bemusement.

The Master of Sinanju was already up. He was transcending with the sun in his white muslin morning kimono.

"Hey, Little Father. I need to know some Korean."

"'I love you' is Song-kyo Hapshida."

"Thanks. But I already know that. How do you say 'F you'?"

Horror froze Chiun's wrinkles. "You have broken up with the most wonderful woman you have ever met or will ever meet?"

"No, I want to tell that rusty battleax off once and for all in language she'll understand."

"I forbid you to do this."

Remo's face fell. "Thanks a lot, Little Father."

Remo ran down the stairs and found an old Korean-English dictionary. It didn't have the correct phrase. Not even a reasonable facsimile.

Remo decided he had only one person to turn to.

HAROLD SMITH ARRIVED for work with the rising sun. He greeted his secretary, nodded to her routine "No messages" and brought up the system linked to the Folcroft Four in the basement of the complex.

He was not long at this when he heard a click behind him. He ignored it. The click came again.

This time, he turned around in his swivel chair.

There, on the other side of the picture window, hovered a common bumblebee. It bumped into the window.

"Impossible," said Smith.

Then the blue contact phone rang.

Not taking his eye off the bee, Smith scooped up the phone.

"Smitty, I need your help" came Remo's voice.

"Not as much as I may need yours," Smith said, his voice drained of all emotion.

"How's that?"

"There is a bee on the other side of my office window. It is trying to get in."

"The two-way window? How can a bee see through it?"

"I suspect he cannot. But as you know, the window faces the Sound. It is not visible except to boaters. Yet this bee appears fascinated by it."

"Maybe it's trying to head-butt his reflection."

"Perhaps. But it seems very determined to enter my office."

"Got any bug killer?"

"I'll get back to you," said Smith.

"When you do, look up the Korean translation for 'F you.'"

"I am not going to ask why you need that information," Smith said thinly.

"Good. Because I'm not going to tell you."

Smith hung up and buzzed his secretary.

"Yes, Dr. Smith?"

"Have maintenance bring me an insecticide fatal to bees."

"Yes, Dr. Smith."

It wasn't long before the maintenance man set the can of Deet on Smith's desk, and Smith dismissed him.

Then Smith went up to the Folcroft roof and, getting down on his stomach after doffing his gray jacket and vest, looked down over the roof combing.

The bee was still hovering at the window not four feet below. Smith could see its back clearly. It was brownish black, except for the fuzzy yellow-and-black midbody, where the wings were rooted. The fuzzy thorax was marked with a distinct skull whose tiny black hollows stared sightlessly upward.

Smith aimed the can, steadying himself, and released a jet of noxious spray.

The stuff spurted down, enveloping the bee. It bobbed off to one side. Smith redirected the spray at it. It dropped, came level and continued to buzz the window.

The can ran empty before the bee got annoyed. Then, like a tiny helicopter, it abruptly shot up to Smith's eye level.

Smith gave it a last shot and the bee, its multifaceted eyes turning white, retreated a dozen feet, blinded.

Discarding the useless can, Smith dashed back to the roof trapdoor and dropped it after him on his way down the ladder.

When he returned to his office, he was shaking.

And the bee was still there. Its tiny face was dripping foamy insecticide now. Otherwise, it was unbothered. The eyes were clearing.

"No normal bee could survive what I just subjected you to," Smith said in a low voice.

He lifted the blue contact receiver and decided that this was a crisis that required the intervention of his enforcement arm ....

Chapter 27

Tammy Terrill expected a big rambling Victorian out of The Addams Family. Or a long white lab building. Maybe even a rustic ranch or adobe fort.

She didn't expect a mud hut.

Actually, it wasn't a hut. It was too big. It was more like a wasp's nest, but it was made from dried mud. Not piled mud, but sculpted and smoothed mud. Its flowing skin was blistered with strangely shaped windows like bug eyes made of glass. If not for the fact that it was the same color and texture as a Mississippi riverbank, it might have been beautiful in a weirdly futuristic way.

"Can you believe this place?" she whispered to her new cameraman, whose name was Bill. Or maybe Phil. He had come down from the Baltimore affiliate.

"Takes all kinds," said the cameraman.

"Okay. Let's see what we can see."

They circled the hive. It was dotted with glass blisters. There was a front door and a back. In back, there was some kind of shed made of steel. From the shed was coming a strange humming.

"Sounds like bees," whispered Tammy.

"Sounds like sick bees."

"Or killer bees who haven't been able to kill as much as they like," suggested Tammy.

"Better leave it alone, then."

"I'm more interested in what's inside this big hive thing."

"I want no part of any break-in."

"No law against shoving a camera up against somebody's window and taping away," Tammy argued.

Bill-or Phil-shrugged. "I'll go along with that."

They picked a window at random. Creeping up to it, they pressed their faces against the chicken-wire-reinforced pane.

What they saw inside made their eyes grow round as saucers and their jaws fall open.

"Damn! Frankenstein's lab wasn't this weird," the Fox cameraman mumbled.

"If this isn't the story of the century, I'll eat shit and like it. Now, get to taping before Wurmlinger shows up ...."

Chapter 28

The bumblebee had moved to the main entrance of Folcroft Sanitarium by the time Remo drove the rental car through the stone gates with their foreboding lion heads on either side.

Folcroft was in a state of lock-down. No one could get in or out. And through the car telephone, Harold Smith was sounding nervous.

"Find that thing and crush it!" Smith was saying. "We cannot afford to call attention to the organization."

"Relax, Smitty. You run a sanitarium and you have an extermination problem. The exterminators are here. We'll take care of it."

"Hurry," said Smith.

Remo drove up to the main door, and the hovering bee seemed to take almost instant notice of Remo and Chiun.

It was completely white now, carrying a coat of drying insecticide as if it had just emerged from a happy bubble bath.

It flitted before their windshield, regarding them with what looked like cataract-gazed eyes.

"Okay," said Remo, "let's take this guy."

Chiun lifted a calming hand. "Wait. Let us observe it for a time."

"What's to observe? It's another of those superbees. Our job is to kill it and turn the body over to Smith."

"No, our task is to survive our encounter with this devil in the form of a bee."

"That, too," Remo agreed. Turning off the engine, he settled back in his seat.

They watched as the bee grew increasingly curious, zipping to Remo's side window, around the back, then to Chiun. It butted its head against the glass at several points.

"It wants in," Remo muttered.

"No, it desires us to step out."

"Just say when."

Chiun was stroking his wispy beard. "We must foil its evil intentions, Remo."

"Hard to believe a bee has any intentions, evil or whatever."

The Master of Sinanju said nothing. His eyes were intent upon the hovering bee. They studied one another for several moments, then gradually, imperceptibly, Chiun slipped his fingers up to the small wing window on his side of the car.

"Remo," he undertoned, not moving his lips.

"Yeah?" said Remo, equally stiff lipped.

Chiun wrapped ivory fingers around the window latch. "When I say jump, you will jump from the vehicle as quickly as you can, taking care to slam the door behind you, also as quickly as you can."

"And what are you going to do?"

Instead of answering, Chiun flipped open the wing window and squeaked, "Jump!"

Three things happened in very quick succession. Remo jumped from the car. The bee slipped through the open window, and the Master of Sinanju simultaneously shut the window behind it and exited the vehicle.

So perfect was their timing that both doors clunked shut with one dull sound, and the bumblebee found itself trapped in the vehicle with no escape. It went into a frenzy of aerial acrobatics and glass-butting.

Harold Smith came down to see it for himself.

"Behold the fruits of your power, O Emperor," proclaimed the Master of Sinanju in a lofty voice. "The assassin that sought your life awaits your tender mercies."

Smith frowned with all his lemony intensity. "It should be dead."

"This can be arranged," said Chiun.

"Yeah," added Remo. "We'll just push the car into the water and drown it."

Smith shook his head. "No. I need to examine it."

"That's going to be a trick," said Remo. "It was a trick getting it in there. Getting it out safely, I don't know about."

"There must be a way."

"There is," said Chiun.

Remo and Smith looked at the Master of Sinanju with studied interest.

"But I do not know what that way is-as yet," Chiun admitted thinly.

All three men gave it considerable thought.

Smith said, "Insects breathe by diffusion, which means air comes in through their bodies. It is not possible to suffocate it in the normal sense."

"Insecticide is out," added Remo. "You tried that."

"Ah," said Chiun.

"Ah?"

The old Korean flitted into the building and returned moments later carrying the separate parts of a Pyrex cake holder in his long-nailed hands, undoubtedly scavenged from the Folcroft cafeteria.

"I don't think that's going to work, Little Father," Remo cautioned.

"Ordinarily, what I have in mind would never work," Chiun allowed. "But you are not undertaking the task at hand, but me. I will make it work."

Addressing Smith, he said, "Emperor, seek a place of shelter from which you may enjoy this display of the power you control so artfully."

Smith retreated to a position behind the glass door and watched intently.

"Remo, when I say open the door, you will open the door," Chiun said, eyeing the agitated bee.

"What about shutting it again?" Remo asked.

"It will not be necessary."

And the Master of Sinanju stationed himself at the side door where the bee was most active. Remo grabbed the door handle and set himself.

Chiun lifted the cake holder and its Pyrex bell in either hand like a musician about to clash together a pair of cymbals.

"Now!"

Remo yanked open the door.

The bee obligingly bumbled out. And was captured.

It was a near thing. The cake-holder sections came together with an unmusical crack. But when Chiun uprighted the cake holder, the bee was buzzing around the interior in angry, frustrated orbits.

Smith came running back down, and Chiun presented the cake holder to him. Smith took it gingerly in both hands.

"Thank you, Master Chiun. Now come inside."

They took the elevator to the administration floor, and Smith informed his secretary to inform the guard staff that all was well.

"The killer bee has been captured," he said, rather unnecessarily inasmuch as Mrs. Mikulka's wide eyes followed the Pyrex-protected bee until the point it disappeared into Smith's office.

Inside, behind closed doors, Smith set the cake holder on his desk.

The still-dripping bee orbited a few more moments, then settled down to stand tensely on its multiple legs.

"It looks like an ordinary bumblebee," Smith was saying as he took a red plastic object from his desk. He flipped it, and a red-ringed magnifying glass slipped out. Holding it by the combination lens protector and handle, Smith trained it on the quiescent bee.

As if equally curious, the bee obligingly stepped closer- giving Smith a better view. Its foamy feelers quivered and dripped.

"This is a bumblebee," Smith said.

"Wurmlinger said it was a drone," said Remo.

The bee turned around once and mooned Smith. The gesture of disrespect was entirely lost on Smith.

"I see a stinger," he breathed. "Drone bees do not possess stingers."

"That one does," Remo declared.

"Clearly," said Smith, returning the magnifying glass to his desk drawer and shutting it.

Dropping into his ancient, cracked leather executive's chair, Harold Smith addressed Remo and Chiun while not taking his eye off the bee, which had turned around to regard him with tiny blind-looking orbs.

"This is not an African killer bee or any genetic mutation of one. It is a common honey bee drone equipped with a stinger."

"And a brain," added Chiun.

"Not to mention a death's-head on its back," Remo said.

Smith frowned deeply. "Somehow, this bee was sent here to spy on me. The only way this could have happened is if it were able to communicate with the bee you killed in California."

"Get that body yet?"

"No. It has not been recovered from the crashed 727."

"I don't see how bees can talk across three thousand miles of country," Remo said.

"Somehow, there is a way they do."

"Don't bees talk to one another by touching antennae?"

"You are thinking of ants," said Smith.

"I thought bees operated the same way."

"No, they communicate by giving off chemical scents, as well as via aerial acrobatics such as the honey dance."

"Where did I get the idea they touched feelers?" Remo wondered aloud.

"I do not know. Nor can I imagine how we will discover the truth."

"Why not ask the bee?" suggested the Master of Sinanju.

They looked at him, their faces growing flat as plaster.

"You speak bee?" countered Remo.

"No, but if the bee was able to read the address of Fortress Folcroft in California and impart this intelligence to the bee we have captured, they must speak American."

"That's crazy!" exploded Remo.

"If you do not care to try, I will," sniffed Chiun.

Remo backed away with an inviting bow and flourish of one arm. "Be my guest."

The Master of Sinanju hiked up his golden kimono skirts and addressed the bee in the bell jar.

"Hearken, O foiled one. For I am Chiun, Master of Sinanju, royal assassin to the court of Harold the First, current Emperor of America, in whose merciless toils you have found yourself. Before you are consigned to the cruel fate you so richly deserve, I demand you divulge all you know of the plot against Smith the Wise. Failure to do so will result in a beheading by a dull, rusty headsman's ax. Cooperation will grant you the boon of a sharp blade and a swift, painless death."

Remo snorted. "You can't behead a bee."

"Shush," said Chiun with a double upward flourish of his expansive kimono sleeves. "Speak now, doomed insect, and spare yourself an ugly ending."

The bee hadn't moved through all of this. Not even its feelers.

Then, after twitching its wings once, it emitted a high, tiny sound.

It wasn't a buzz or a drone. Nor was it the sharp ziii of a bee in flight.

Remo and Chiun leaned in. The sound was too small for Smith's normal aging ears, but there was something about it that touched their senses.

"Speak louder, O bee," Chiun instructed.

The bee seemed to make another sound.

"I feel like an idiot," said Remo, backing away.

Chiun eyed Smith and asked, "Have you a device for capturing sounds?"

"Yes." Smith dug out a pocket tape recorder with a suction mike attachment made for recording telephone calls.

Chiun nodded. "Affix this device."

Smith attached the cup to the glass and pressed the Record button.

"What the hell are you doing, Smitty?" Remo asked in exasperation.

"Perhaps its sound can be identified by an entomologist," Smith said defensively.

Remo rolled his eyes.

Lifting his arms like a conjurer invoking a genie, Chiun exhorted, "Speak again, O bee."

The tiny sound was repeated, and when it stopped, Smith hit the Stop switch, rewound and then pressed Playback.

He fingered the volume control to the highest setting and waited.

The tape hissed loudly. Then came a tiny, metallic voice. "Release me now, or my brethren will swarm down in deadly numbers."

"What!" Remo exploded.

Gray face slack with shock, Smith replayed that part again.

"That was you throwing your voice, wasn't it?" Remo accused Chiun.

"I deny this accusation," Chiun sniffed.

Smith hit the Record button and asked Chiun, "Inquire who it is."

"To whom do I have the privilege of speaking?"

"I am but a drone in the service of the King of Bees," replayed the tape recorder after Smith rewound it.

"Who is this ruler?" demanded Chiun. "Speak the fiend's name."

"I serve the Lord of All Bees."

"Is that anything like the Lord of the Flies?" grunted Remo, who couldn't quite believe what he was hearing but went along anyway.

Smith stared at the bee, open-mouthed and bugeyed.

"I have a question for it," said Remo.

Chiun gestured him to go ahead.

"Who told you to come here?" asked Remo.

"My master." This time, Remo heard the voice clearly. The tape playback verified what he had heard.

"How'd you find this address?" asked Remo.

The tape recorder replayed the tiny reply. "One of my brethren read the address off the package you mailed from Los Angeles."

Harold Smith groaned in a mixture of horror and disbelief. "Our cover is blown."

"To the freaking bee kingdom, Smith," Remo said in exasperation. "It's not like it's going to be spread over tomorrow's New York Times!"

Smith eyed the bee. "Your terms are rejected."

"Then my vengeance will be awesome to behold. Tremble, mankind. Tremble before the awesome might of the Bee-Master."

"Did he say Bee-Master?" asked Remo.

"He has been saying that all along," said Harold Smith.

Remo snapped his fingers. "That's where I read about bees talking by antennae. In old comic books."

"It served you right for believing it," said Smith.

"Give me a break. I was only a kid. What did I know?"

"Chiun, we must drown this vermin," Smith said grimly.

"The interrogation is over, O merciless one?"

"Find a way to drown it. I must have the remains for analysis."

Bowing, the Master of Sinanju lifted up the cake holder and bore it into Smith's private washroom.

The bee was racing around the inside of the Pyrex dome, with all the agitated impotence of a condemned prisoner when they last saw it.

As the sound of running water came, Remo looked at Harold Smith and Smith looked back. Smith's face ,was gray and haggard; Remo's was flat with a kind of shocked bewilderment.

"Bees don't talk," Remo said.

"That one did," Smith said tonelessly. He fumbled with his hunter green Dartmouth tie.

"Bees don't talk," Remo repeated.

"That one did," Smith insisted, his voice rising in anger.

When Chiun returned, he was holding an aquarium in the form of a cake holder. The bee floated in it, upside down like a defunct goldfish.

"It is done. The fiend will trouble you no more."

"Thank you, Master Chiun."

A worried silence hung around the room.

Remo broke it. "That bee said he served the Bee-Master."

Smith had his head in his hands as if he were experiencing a severe migraine headache.

"I only know of one Bee-Master," Remo added.

Smith looked up. The expression on Remo's face was approximately that of a man who had tried to scratch his nose only to find he'd grown a tentacle where his hand should be.

"Bee-Master was a comic-book superhero when I was a kid. He was a scientist who invented a radio that could translate the language bees spoke."

"Bees do not speak," Smith snapped. Then he caught himself.

Remo kept talking in a distant voice. "Bee-Master became a friend to the bee kingdom. When spies tried to steal his insecto-radio to sell to Russian agents, his bee friends stung them into submission. From that point, they were a team. Bee-Master became a crime fighter. He wore a black-and-yellow costume with a helmet that looked like a hightech bee's head. Everywhere he went, bees flew with him. They communicated through their antennae. Funny how I remember that story. I haven't laid eyes on an issue of The Bizarre Bee-Master in a zillion years."

"It is not possible to communicate with bees in the manner you describe. The person who created that story knows nothing about bees," Smith said firmly.

"Hey, I'm only telling you what this crazy stuff reminds me of."

"Nonsense."

"Sure. But you could check it out."

Smith did. Grimly, he input "Bee-Master" into his system and executed the search command.

Up popped a heroic figure dressed somewhat along the lines of a yellow jacket, with an aluminum helmet concealing his head. The helmet sported antennae and great crimson compound eyes in place of human ones.

The figure was labeled The Bizarre Bee-Master.

"That's him!" said Remo. "Where'd you find it?"

"This is the official Bee-Master web page, sponsored by Cosmic Comics," Smith said dryly.

Remo's face lit with surprise. "I didn't know they sere still making Bee-Master comics. Check it out. It has BeeMaster's complete history."

Remo read over Smith's gray shoulder. Chiun, after looking briefly, made a face and went back to examining the dead bee corpse floating in water.

"According to this," Remo said, "Bee-Master is really Peter Pym, biochemist. He controls his bee friends through electronic impulses from his cybernetic helmet." Remo grunted. "I always wondered what cybernetic meant. None of the nuns at the orphanage knew."

Smith tapped a key. The word cybernetic was highlighted. Another tap brought up a dictionary definition.

"Cybernetic," Smith explained, "means the science of control. And the concept described here is ridiculous. Insects do not communicate through electrical impulses, but via chemical scents only other insects comprehend."

Remo grinned "Maybe you should run a search on the name Peter Pym."

"Why? It is a fictitious name."

"Just a thought. It's the only lead we have."

"It is no lead at all," said Harold Smith, escaping from the official Bee-Master web page. His eyes went to the floating bumblebee under Chiun's silent scrutiny. The expression on his lemony face suggested he had already begun to doubt his memory of the bee communicating in tinny English sentences.

Briefly, he replayed the tape, and the bee's nervous little voice was so disturbing, he clicked it off again.

"Find that info I wanted, Smitty?" Remo asked after a moment.

Smith snapped-out of his daze. Attacking his keyboard once more, he brought up a phrase in Hangul, the modern Korean alphabet.

Remo read it.

"Dwe juhla," he said. Turning to Chiun, he asked, "Did I get the pronunciation right?"

Turning dull crimson, the Master of Sinanju lifted his kimono sleeve before his face out of shame over his pupil's severely coarse language.

Remo grinned. "I guess that's my answer."

Chapter 29

Helwig X. Wurmlinger drove his grasshopper green Volkswagen Beetle from the airport to his private residence outside Baltimore, Maryland.

When the mud dome appeared, his twitchy face began to relax. He was home. It was good to be home. It was often useful and necessary to travel, but Helwig X. Wurmlinger wasn't a social insect, but a solitary one. His preference for solitude enabled him to toil long hours and perform experiments that would frighten those who didn't share his appreciation of the insect world in its multitudinous harmony with nature.

Friendless, wifeless, Wurmlinger saw nothing wrong with living in what was for all intents and purposes a mud nest. There were no dissenting opinions in Helwig X. Wurmlinger's life. No one to gently inform him that he had crossed the line from the merely eccentric into the truly weird.

When, turning up the path to his home, he saw the white satellite truck marked Fox News Network, Wurmlinger became agitated. His mouth twitched, and his face joined in.

He was shaking when he unfolded himself from the cramped confines of his Beetle. And when he saw the cameraman with his mires jammed up against a side window, he ran so fast his arms flapped loose as sticks at his sides.

"What is the meaning of this!" he demanded. "What are you doing on my property?"

The cameraman flung himself around, and Wurmlinger found himself looking into the glassy eye of the camera.

A frosty female voice intruded. "Maybe you're the one who has some explaining to do ...."

It was that Fox woman. Wurmlinger had already forgotten her name, but he recognized her voice and facial contortions.

"You are trespassing!" Wurmlinger told her with studied indignity.

Instead of answering the undeniable charge, the blond woman said into a microphone she lifted to her mouth, "I am here with insect geneticist and etymologist-"

"Entomologist," Wurmlinger corrected tersely.

"-Helwig X. Wurmlinger of the USDA Bee Research Lab. Is that correct, Dr. Wurmlinger?"

"Yes, yes."

"If you work for the federal government, why do you have your own private laboratory here in the outback?"

"This is the backwoods. The outback is in Australia!"

"Answer the question, Doctor."

"This, my private laboratory, is where I do my work for the USDA. Here, I also conduct other experiments. None of them the business of the general public or yourself."

"I draw your attention to the strange buzzing coming from the boxes in back of your property, Dr. Wurmlinger."

"That is my apiary. It is where I keep my bees."

"Is that so? If ordinary bees are your business, why are they making such a strange sound?"

"What strange sound?"

"Are you denying your bees are abnormal?"

"These are perfectly normal Buckeye Superbees. I employ their products to sweeten my tea and maintain my health."

"Step this way."

Walking backward, Tammy and her cameraman worked their way to the rear of Wurmlinger's odd home. He walked after them, his thoughts confused. Why were these people here? What did they want? And why were they filming him walking around his hive?

When they reached the back, the cameraman swung around to capture the apiary on film.

From the bee boxes came a weird, doleful humming.

"My bees!" Wurmlinger bleated. He rushed toward them.

The sound was sinister and eerie. It wasn't a drone, nor was it a buzz. It was something unhappy and anguished.

Dropping to one knee, Wurmlinger unlatched one of the steel frames that contained honeycombs. He lifted it up and scrutinized the bees crawling along it with naked concern on his long face.

"Mites!" he groaned. "Mites have gotten to my poor bees."

Dropping the comb frame back, Wurmlinger went to another bee box. Another batch of bees was brought to light. They moved sluggishly among their waxy honeycomb cells.

"More mites!" he groaned.

A third box came up with honey and a gooey mass but no bees.

"Foulbrood! These bees are dead."

"What happened to them?" Tammy demanded, sticking her microphone into his bitter face.

Woodenly, Helwig X. Wurmlinger came to his feet. He steadied himself. "My bees are ruined," he said helplessly.

"Are these killer bees?"

"No, I breed only European honeybees and a few exotics."

"Are you aware, Dr. Wurmlinger, of the rash of killer-bee-related deaths in New York and Los Angeles, information that the U.S. government is withholding from the public?"

"I know nothing of New York-and you know as much as I do about the inexplicable events in Los Angeles!" Wurmlinger said in exasperation. "You were there."

"Answer the question," Tammy undertoned.

"Yes, yes, a new species of venomous feral bee has been introduced into the ecosystem of North America."

"Do you deny knowing the true origin of these killer bees?"

"Please do not use that unscientific term. The correct term is 'Bravo bee.'"

"You sound like a man sympathetic to bees?" Tammy prompted, all but scaling Wurmlinger's greenish teeth with her mike.

"Bees are the most beneficial insects known to man. They pollinate eighty percent of crops in the country. Without them, mankind would not eat."

"I'm not talking about friendly bees, but the death's-head bee that the United States government has unleashed upon the world."

"What are you talking about?"

"New, vicious kinds of bees created by the USDA for reasons still unknown. Bees that sting over and over again. Bees that inject a fatal poison to which modern medicine has no antidote. Bees that have so far inflicted horrible deaths on eight persons with no end in sight. Do you deny, Dr. Wurmlinger, that in Los Angeles three people alone have succumbed to the bite of the death's-head superbee?"

"Sting," Wurmlinger said testily. "Bees do not bite except for a few harmless species."

The insistent reporter stepped in and demanded in a stern voice, "Only a trained insect geneticist could create a race of superbees. Only someone with the scientific knowledge, the funding and a secluded laboratory away from curious eyes."

Tammy ducked behind the cameraman and pointed an accusing finger so that the camera captured it from its own point of view.

"Only you, Dr. Helwig X. Wurmlinger!"

"Nonsense."

"Nonsense? Do you deny conducting secret genetic experiments in this lab of yours? Do you deny unleashing unknown horrors on an unsuspecting world?"

"I do deny these insane allegations," Wurmlinger sputtered.

"Then how do you explain this!" Tammy crowed.

And turning to her cameraman, Tammy said, "Show America what Dr. Wurmlinger has been doing with their tax dollars."

The cameraman pivoted and trained his minicam at a handy window. He zoomed in.

And in the Baltimore Fox affiliate, a news director watched tensely as the feed came in. Clearly visible through the chicken-wire-reinforced window was a dragonfly whose body and legs were studded with dozens of unwinking compound ruby eyes.

It looked for a reassuring moment like a weird model of a dragonfly from another dimension.

That illusion was broken with startling suddenness when the dragonfly's wings came to life and it floated away, leaving the unnerving impression that it had been staring at them with its narrow rear end.

Chapter 30

Mearl Streep watched the Fox broadcast from the comfort of his RV barreling along Interstate 80 to Washington, D.C.

He had purchased the RV with the monthly dues from his loyal Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia, christening it the IDSM Mobile Guerrilla Command HQ and Recreational Center, and installed a close aide to drive it.

He was leading a convoy of pickup trucks, sport utilities and off-road vehicles-all made in the USA-to Washington. They were taking the long way around, because Mearl understood that taking the capital of the greatest nation in the world required more manpower than his thirty or so militia members, none of whom had actually served in a peacetime army or national guard, much less fought in an actual war.

After all, they were corn farmers mostly.

Their war fever was pretty high by the time they rolled out of the Corn State with its mysteriously precise checkerboard of desolation.

"When we get back, we're taking over the surviving farms," Mearl boasted. "Taking 'em back from the collaborators."

"We'll run 'em off," his aide-de-camp, Gordon Garret, called from behind the wheel.

"Naw. You can't merely run collaborators off. That's why I'm calling it Rope Day."

"You're going to hang farmers, Mearl?" Gordon asked in horror.

"No. But I am bound and determined to hang any collaborators and traitors to the Constitution of the United States that I find, agricultural affiliations notwithstanding."

"Oh, that's different."

Along the way, they kept watch out for the much-dreaded black rotary-winged aircraft of the New World Order, but no mysterious helicopters came into view.

They checked for bar codes on the back of highway signs, and when found, spray-painted them black because these were the guide posts by which the combined forces of the Trilateral Commission, the UN peacekeepers and ethnic irregulars pulled from the nation's worst ghettos, would use to find their targets on zero hour of H Day. They also defaced various billboards advertising the latest Meryl Streep film.

Along the way, they took in some mighty fine countryside, and Mearl got to swig a refreshing assortment of locally brewed beers. It was the good life in its way, and sure beat shucking corn.

When the Fox special entitled "The Death's-Head Superbee Report" came on, he immediately took notice.

A blond reporter with the suspiciously foreign name of Tamara Terrill started off the broadcast by asking some fascinating questions.

"Has a new species of killer bee been unleashed upon the United States of America? How many have died, and how has the United States Department of Agriculture covered up the growing threat?"

At the mention of the USDA, Mearl sat up straight. He never trusted the Agriculture Department, or any branch of the federal government except where it came to farm subsidies that he figured were his due. And the word cover-up was one of the most active in his vocabulary.

"More importantly," Tamara Terrill was saying, "has the federal government itself created this death bee in hidden USDA laboratories? And for what sinister purpose? Are these merely superbees or the vanguard of a new kind of bee destined to ravage the globe?

"For the answer to these questions, we begin with the strangely underreported death of insect geneticist Doyal T. Rand in Times Square several days ago."

At that, Mearl Streep hollered for his driver to pull over. Behind him, the Convoy to Freedom likewise pulled over.

"Hey, you men gather around. You gotta see this."

They clambered into the RV, hunkering down on the floor and open seats. Those who didn't fit, crowded around the outside, listening from the open windows.

There by the dusty dirt of the road in Pennsylvania, they watched in growing fascination as an unassailable chain of logic was woven from rumor, facts, innuendo and sloppy reportage. But to Mearl Streep and his Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia, it not only rang with truth, but it fit perfectly with everything they believed.

The clincher came when footage from Iowa was shown-footage of the bizarre hours-old ravaging of previously sacrosanct corn country.

"Is this, too, the work of the superbee of doom?" Tamara was asking.

Mearl brought a fist down on his padded armrest, crushing an empty can of Sam Adams. "As sure as the CIA has a surveillance microchip in my left butt cheek," he said, "it's gotta be. I can feel it in my bones."

The program grasshoppered from Iowa to Los Angeles and the successive deaths of two county coroners and "a brave but nameless Fox cameraman who dared to investigate the truth," according to Tamara Terrill.

Then came the portion of the program that made their blood run cold. The program had been hinting at USDA involvement and denials and was leading up to some incredible revelation. When it hit, it left Mearl Streep and his men sitting slack jawed in their seats.

The program cut to a weird mud hive of a building in God alone knew where. And it showed a long drink of weird with the alien name of Helwig X. Wurmlinger denying all manner of schemes and horrors.

The capper came when the TV screen filled with the image of a big dragonfly with red eyes everywhere except on his head. When it took off, showing it was alive, the assembled militiamen jumped in place and began scratching themselves as if feeling vermin on their patriotic hides.

There were other things glimpsed through the window of the "laboratory from Hell," as Fox was calling it.

Roaches with prosthetic limbs. Two-headed spiders. And other things God never meant to be.

And over these accusations came the disembodied voice of Helwig X. Wurmlinger protesting his innocence over and over again, as the evidence of his ungodly tampering with nature filled TV screens all over America.

After the program ended with the promise of further reports from Fox, Mearl Streep sat in his cammies, oblivious to the spilled can of Sam Adams in his lap, and said, "You freedom fighters listen up now."

They perked up.

"Washington can wait. That tall glass of bug juice is responsible for the plague that descended upon God-fearing Iowa. And we as the lawful Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia are duty bound to find, interrogate and squash him and his traitorous works flat."

They locked and loaded, piled into their respective vehicles and right-turned toward Maryland and righteous revenge.

Chapter 31

An Iowa National Guard helicopter ferried Remo and Chiun from the Des Moines airport to the affected area. They were not the only helicopter in the sky. News choppers were everywhere, like noisy crows.

The Guard pilot was ordering them to keep the airspace clear. He wasn't being ignored. Not at all. In fact, a lot of the news teams flew in tandem pointing their glassy-eyed cameras his way and tried to interview him by radio.

The pilot ignored all entreaties to offer a semiofficial opinion of the blight that had descended upon central Iowa.

In back, the Master of Sinanju looked down at the wavy rows of growing corn and made a disgusted face. "Corn. It is a pestilence."

"Get off it, Chiun," Remo said.

"You have tasted its forbidden grains. You are prejudiced."

Remo tried changing the subject. "What do you think caused this, Little Father?"

"A plague. Of course."

Remo looked interested. "Locusts?"

"A plague. More I cannot say until I have stood amid the terrible yellow stalks that have conquered the white world."

"Are we talking about corn?"

"I am talking about corn. You are only listening."

The helicopter descended upon a ruined cornfield, and Chiun stepped out. Standing with legs apart, he girded his kimono skirts and surveyed the damage.

Remo got out on the other side, ducking under the still-turning main rotor. It made his short dark hair ripple anxiously.

Not a cornstalk was standing. The ground was littered with immature yellow kernels and shredded golden cornsilk. The air smelled of fresh-picked corn.

Remo inhaled it with pleasure. Chiun cast a disapproving eye in his direction. Remo had developed a taste for corn a year or so back, something Chiun violently disapproved of. No grain but pure white rice was permitted in the Sinanju diet. Remo had protested that there was nothing wrong with corn.

"I ate some and didn't get sick," he had said. "American Indians eat it all the time."

"I care not with what the red man filled his lazy belly," Chiun had replied. "You are Sinanju. You are of the East now. Not of the West. You are forbidden corn."

"According to the best experts, American Indians came from Asia. They're a mix of Mongols, Chinese and Koreans."

"South Koreans, perhaps," sniffed Chiun, whose ancestors came from the cold, forbidding north. "Our blood is northern. We do not pollute it with yellow grains."

And that had been the end of the discussion.

As they stood on the black Iowa loam, Remo decided to pick up the argument. "I don't see what's so terrible about corn," he muttered.

Chiun considered for a time. Whether he was considering Remo's question or the fragrant desolation about him wasn't clear at first. Finally, he spoke. "It is too sweet."

"It's a nice change of pace from rice," Remo said.

"Rice is sweeter than corn. Rice is sweet in a clean way. Corn is heavy and starchy and honey sweet."

"Nothing wrong with honey," remarked Remo, kicking at a well-chewed ear of corn.

"Honey is permissible in tea. You would not honey your rice."

"No," Remo admitted.

They walked. Remo picked up pieces of fallen cornstalks and examined them. Chiun's hazel eyes raked the surroundings, taking everything in. He seemed uninterested in the details.

"No twister did this," Remo remarked.

Chiun nodded sagely. "A plague. It has all the earmarks of a plague."

"Speaking of ears," said Remo, "I still don't see what's so terrible about corn."

"Your foolish question reminds me of Master Kokmul."

Remo made a thinking face. "Kokmul. I don't know him."

"He lived long ago. But you and he would have enjoyed one another's company," said Chiun.

Remo brightened. "How's that?"

"He was very much like you-foolish."

Remo's shoulders fell.

They continued walking.

"Kokmul lived after the unthinking Columbus came to the so-called New World and brought back to Europe the pestilence called corn," Chiun said slowly, his eyes roving over the fields as if expecting the dead corn to rear up and jump them.

"Pestilence?"

"Corn grew in the Spain of the spend-thrift Isabella, from there spreading east and west until it reached Cathay," said Chiun in a doleful tone.

"China, huh? Funny, I never saw corn in Korea."

"Corn did come to Korea, thanks to Kokmul the Foolish. But it was cast out by his successor."

"I guess I'm about to hear another legend of Sinanju," said Remo, his feet tramping corn leaves without making them rustle.

"Then listen well, for this is a lesson the House cannot afford to learn twice."

Chiun's voice became low and grim. "In the days of Kokmul, there was work in Cathay. The nature of this work was unimportant. It is only important to know that from time to time, Kokmul ventured north of Sinanju on foot to ford the river known today as the Yalu and performed certain services for a certain prince of Cathay.

"On one occasion, Kokmul came to a grove that he first took for young sorghum. Except it was not the season for young sorghum, but tall sorghum. But these green plants, which grew in orderly rows, were neither."

Remo looked around. The corn had been planted in orderly rows with the stalks well-spaced before they were cut down.

"Now, farmers tended these plants that were sown in rows, and it was harvest time," said Chiun. "Weary from his journey, Kokmul stopped and asked a farmer about his unfamiliar crop.

"The farmer, honoring the Master of Sinanju, snapped off the top of one plant and stripped it of its green leaves, exposing a vile yellow thing like a demon's smile with numerous blunt teeth protecting it."

"An ear of corn," said Remo.

"Yes."

"Never heard it described in such appetizing terms," Remo grunted.

Chiun waved the remark away into the corn.

"The farmer showed Kokmul how to boil the yellow thing in water so that its hard teeth did not break human teeth when bitten, and how to eat it safely, as well as how to prepare it as bread or meal. And Kokmul, being an innocent in the ways of corn, became hooked by the wondrous ways in which corn could be eaten."

Remo cocked a skeptical eyebrow. "Hooked?"

"You would call it hooked. Kokmul became a slave to corn, is the way it is inscribed in the Book of Sinanju."

"Okay..."

"So taken with his new addiction was Kokmul that instead of venturing on to the princely court that had summoned him, Kokmul gathered up ears of hard corn and bore them back to the unsuspecting village of Sinanju, then a paradise of rice and fish."

"And laziness," added Remo.

Chiun said nothing to that. He went on. "As you know, Remo, the ground around our ancestral village is not the best. Little grows, except rice in paddies, and often not even that. It was thought by Kokmul that this new thing called corn would grow where other plants did not. So, planting the corn as the Chinese farmer had instructed, Kokmul brought the demon corn to Korea."

They walked along, their feet seeming to float over the loose black loam. At least they left no footprints, though they walked with a firm tread.

"In time," Chiun resumed, "the green stalks rose up. Thick they became. Heavy they grew. The sinister Gold threads that made more corn grow showed themselves like painted harlots peeping out from their hanging tresses. It was much work to raise corn. Not so much as to harvest rice, which is backbreaking work. But it was difficult nonetheless.

"And when the corn was sufficiently tall and ripe, Master Kokmul summoned the villagers and showed them how to strip and shuck the ears and how to store them for the long winter with the winter cabbage. That autumn and winter, the bellies of the villagers were heavy with corn, Remo. And they grew fat."

"Not to mention dumb and happy," said Remo.

A withering glance from Chiun's closest eye stilled Remo's grin. This was serious business to Chiun.

"The First Corn Year passed peacefully. There was no trouble. The second was not so bad, for the corn grew steadily, but not consumingly. Then came the Third Corn Year."

"Uh-oh. What happened? The crops failed?"

Chiun shook his aged head. "No, the pestilence began."

Chiun walked along, narrowed eyes taking in minute details of the ruined corn in his path. Where he could step on a loose kernel, he did. The old Korean seemed to take special delight in extinguishing the half-ripe grains.

"I have warned you, Remo, that corn is not as good or as pure as rice. I have told you it is to be avoided. I have never told you why it is a plague and a pestilence to be crushed wherever it rears its lurid, toothsome head."

Remo grinned. "As they say, I'm all ears."

"You will not laugh when my story is over." Chiun kicked a corncob out of his path. "Rice, when it is digested, nourishes. No grain of rice enters a man's stomach that is not consumed. Not so the sneaky and insidious corn grain."

They came upon a herd of spotted cows busily munching the fallen cobs. The cows hardly took notice of them.

"The corn kernel is hardy and stubborn," Chiun continued. "It cries out to be eaten, but once digested, it does not always surrender its nourishment to the consumer. Some kernels survive, to pass undigested from the body of man and beast alike."

Chiun stopped and gazed down at his feet.

Remo looked down, too.

"What do you see, my son?" asked Chiun.

"Looks like a meadow muffin to me," Remo said.

"Look closer."

Remo knelt. It was cow dung, all right, already dried by the sun. Peeping from the dark mass were glints of smooth golden yellow.

"What do you find so interesting, Remo?" Chiun asked in a thin voice.

"I see the cows have been at the corn."

"Yet the wily corn has escaped the cow's diligence."

"Cows don't chew their food as thoroughly as they could, I guess," said Remo.

"Nor do people. Not even the villagers of Sinanju."

Remo got up. Chiun met his gaze with his thin hazel eyes.

"In the Third Corn Year, Remo, the yellow heads reared everywhere. Where it was planted. Where it was not planted. The villagers ate it in great abundance, with shameless relish, and whenever they squatted in their laxness, they released undigested corn kernels, which took root and grew.

Chiun closed his almond eyes and all but shuddered.

"Before long, the horrid eyesores were everywhere. Even in the rice paddies," he said.

Remo made a mock face of horror. "Not the rice paddies. No."

Chiun nodded grimly. "Yes. By the Third Corn Year, there was no rice. Only corn. This was all right for the villagers, but the Master of Sinanju, on whom the village feeds, required rice to sustain his skills. But there was no rice. Only corn. Kokmul began losing his skills and grew fat and sated on corn."

"What brought him out of it?"

"A simple thing. Death. He died, and his successor took his place. That was Pyo, who went out into the cornfields and with his flashing noble hands decapitated the archdemon's offspring, restoring the bounty of rice to the village of Sinanju and exiling the demon corn from Korea forever. To this day, in the north, it is a crime punishable by death to willfully and knowingly plant corn."

Remo grunted. Looking around, he said, "Well, it's a safe bet Pyo didn't come back from the Void to lay waste to Iowa."

"No, it was not Pyo. It was a plague of another kind."

"What kind?"

"That, we must determine," said Chiun, starting off to a farmhouse beyond the cows.

Shrugging, Remo followed. If Chiun could figure out what happened here, it would have been worth listening to that cockamamy story.

Remo still didn't see what was wrong with a Master of Sinanju eating corn. As long as he chewed his food thoroughly.

Chapter 32

There were no satellite trucks or reporters, no sign of life surrounding the mud-dome laboratory of Helwig X. Wurmlinger as the Freedom Convoy wound its dusty way to the place Commander Mearl Streep of the Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia called "the center of the USDA plot against the heartland."

It didn't look like much when it came into view. A high dome of mud maybe two stories tall. The windows were cut in strange, flowing shapes like bulging insectoid eyes. The only sound that could be heard was the weird, doleful drone of afflicted bees.

"I don't like how that sounds," Gordon Garret said from behind the wheel of the lead RV, which for purely tactical purposes was now bringing up the rear.

"We can't afford to lose our communications nerve center in case point takes a direct hit" was the way Commander Streep put it when they made the switch.

"That sound," said Commander Streep, fingering his lawful AR-15 sport rifle with its sniper scope and full clip of Black Talon bullets, "is the feared anti-American and anti-Christian devil bee. Our sworn enemy."

Garret shivered, his nervous foot hovering over the brake.

"Column, halt!" Streep called over his PA system hookup. The Freedom Convoy came to a jouncing and dusty stop.

"Dismount!"

From the pickups and sport-utility vehicles, the shock troops of the Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia poured out, locking and loading and racking their Remington shotguns, those that had them.

In the relative security of his command RV, their leader dialed the PA system to its highest setting and lifted his mike to his lips.

"Attention! This is Commander Mearl Streep! I call upon Dr. Helwig Wurmlinger to exit his awful abode to answer for his crimes against American agriculture."

The bee buzzing abruptly dropped. Silence fell.

Then an oval door opened, and out into the moonlight stepped a tall, gangling figure whose eyes were wobbly discs of moonlight.

"Are you Wurmlinger?"

"I am. Did you say you were Meryl Streep?"

"Mearl, dammit! Mearl Streep of the Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia."

"Then I have never heard of you, and you are on my property."

"We have come to make you answer for crimes against America and Iowa."

"What rubbish are you speaking? Step into the light where I can see you."

"So you can assassinate me with your devil bee? No. We are not such fools, Wurmlinger." A pause, then he went on. "Boys, get ready to torch that Frankenstein mud-hut!"

The Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia looked around helplessly.

"With what?" one asked. "We ain't brought any torches."

"Well, go into that devil hut and find some flammables."

No one moved. They were too afraid, and the humming. started anew. It was unhappy, like the drone of dying honeybees.

Then a bee did appear. It was big and fat and bobbed up and down in the moonlight, finally coming to a point at the window glass of the RV where Commander Streep was issuing his demands.

It went tick against the glass. This caught Streep's attention, and he turned around.

In the moonlight, the compound eyes regarded him with an alien malevolence. But that wasn't what made the hairs rise on the back of Streep's thick red neck.

It was the unmistakable death's-head on its fuzzy golden black back.

"Assassin bee! It's an assassin bee!" Streep screeched. "Turn smartly, men, and chop it down if you value your lives!"

As one, the Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia wheeled, weapons snapping up and ready to fire.

If they could only find a target.

Questing muzzles remained cold. No gun flashes painted the surrounding woods with their red, purifying flame, Streep saw.

"What are you waiting on, you idiots?" he roared.

"Where is it? Where is it?" his men were saying. Their weapons were tracking the trees, the moon, the RV and the ground. Everywhere but where the solitary devil bee hovered, patient and sinister.

That was when Streep fumbled a flashlight out of a cargo pocket of his cammies. He clicked it on. A light popped. He trained it on the bee and called out, "There is your target! Shoot to kill!"

The Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia did.

The night air was lit by zipping yellow tracer flashes. The percussive stutter of autofire and the accompanying din of the war cries of men more afraid than angry shook the tense air.

When the guns stopped, there was no sign of the bee or Dr. Helwig X. Wurmlinger.

"Did we get him? Did we get him?" a shaking voice asked.

Coming up from under a pile of cushions on the RV floor, Commander Mearl Streep wondered the very same thing.

He was fumbling for his flash when a new sound cut the disturbed evening.

It was a drone. High, metallic, it was nothing like the sad drone of the hived bees that had greeted them. It was angry, insistent and it filled the night like viciously sharp blades of sound.

The Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia stretched and craned their necks all around them. Fear warped their moonlit faces, their eyes bugged out and sweat oozed from exposed pores.

"Shoot at the sky! Shoot the sky!" Commander Streep called out. "It's a swarm of devil bees. They come for us!"

The Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia obeyed their commander with an alacrity that would have made a four-star general proud.

Except for one problem: they had neglected to reload their weapons.

Click-click-click went their weapons like so many cap guns firing. Or in this case, not firing.

Because, while their helplessness was dawning on them, the insistent buzz reached a crescendo and they began grabbing themselves at every exposed orifice. A few sneezed violently. But whatever had gotten up their noses wouldn't come back out. Some covered their ears with their palms, but just as quickly uncovered them when they realized the high buzzing was inside their ears already.

One militiaman stood with his head cocked to one side, slapping his right ear in hopes of dislodging whatever had gotten into his left auditory canal. He cried out with each self-inflicted jar of his skull.

From the relative safety of his command RV, Commander Mearl Streep watched in mounting horror. The cream of his militia was falling all around him, conquered by something they could neither see nor shoot at. All it was was a high noise that might have been the sound of the glassy falling moonlight under severe stress, if light could emit sounds.

One by one, the Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia began dropping.

At his post at the RV's wheel, Gordon Garret enjoyed a commanding view of the slaughter. "What's killing them? I can't see anything!"

By way of answer, Commander Mearl Streep retched uncontrollably.

When a man rolling on the ground in his death throes happened to turn his way, Commander Streep saw the thing that made him sorry he had ever elected to take on the dark forces of the federal government.

As he watched, the man's open, terrified eyes were disintegrating. Actually melting from sight like so much candle wax consumed by fire.

But there was no fire. And no sign of bees.

Mearl Streep was no fool. He knew a losing battle when he witnessed one.

"Retreat! Retreat! We're pulling back!" Streep said. "Get us the holy heck out of here!"

Hands shaking, Gordon Garret keyed the engine to life.

It was too late. Though every window was sealed, the vengeful buzz got him, too. Taking hold of his skull, he jerked out of his seat and began throwing himself around the RV's plush jungle-camouflage-motif interior.

The most awful thing about it was that something seemed to have gotten into his skull. Streep figured that from the way he deliberately banged his head into bulkheads and windows-even the microwave, which popped open.

Fumbling with the door, Garret stuck his head into the microwave oven and stabbed every button he could.

Nothing happened. The safety mechanism defeated his desperate attempt to microwave himself to death.

By the time Garret slid out, loose as a sack of cold manure, Commander Mearl Streep was cowering in back at the rear-exit door latch.

The drone was still in the air. The howling and threshing had all stopped.

Carefully, Streep turned on his haunches and reached for the exit latch. He took hold of it. Only then did he face away from the RV's green, brown and black interior.

When he turned, his blood ran cold.

For on the other side of the glass, hovering on moon-blurred wings, was a death's-head bumblebee. Its compound eyes regarded him without understanding or mercy.

"Oh, God." Streep gulped, releasing the latch.

That's when the buzzing seemed to lift from Cordon Garret's dead body and work its way toward him.

Streep's widening eyes saw nothing. But he knew with a nerve-numbing certainty that something he couldn't see-only hear-was moving toward him, seeking his life.

In desperation, he yanked on the latch and tumbled out.

That was when the killer bumblebee jumped him. Something else attacked, too. Streep could feel things in his ears and his nose. They felt like living sounds crawling into his skull, seeking his brain to quench its dark, un-American appetites.

Commander Mearl Streep died screaming as his tongue and eyeballs melted in his very head with the speed of candle wax vaporizing. The sound of his screaming grew so loud it almost rivaled that of the thing hungrily devouring the contents of his head. But not quite.

When he collapsed into a sunken heap of camouflage green, the sound ascended to the cold moon and faded in the night.

After a while, the death's-head bumblebee sought the hollow of a nearby elm tree to pass the night.

It was dawn before Dr. Helwig X. Wurmlinger dared to step out of his eccentric home. He took one look at all the eyeless, immobile corpses and said, "Goodness gracious me."

Then he went out back to check on his sick bees.

Chapter 33

Remo and Chiun found the owner of the farm in his farmhouse.

It was a pretty good-size farmhouse. At least twelve rooms. The house was rambling, its clapboard skin painted white. The barn and grain silo behind it were as red as a hot brick, however.

Remo knocked on the door and received no reply. So he knocked again.

"I hear someone inside," he told Chiun.

"Do as you will. I will not cross the threshold of the house of corn." And Chiun walked off to survey the desolation that lay seemingly in all directions.

Remo tried the door. It wasn't locked and he stepped in.

Beyond the foyer, with its lace curtains and polished staircase leading upstairs, was a spacious livingroom area.

The owner of the house was seated in a big recliner with his eyes fixed on a working television. It was a big-screen TV, tuned to the Fox twenty-four-hour news channel.

The man had the weathered look of someone who toiled in the sun. His eyes were squinted up, and the backs of his hands were red and raw as a blister. He wore bib-style coveralls over a red plaid flannel shirt, and on an end table sat a baseball cap that said Seedtec.

Remo said, "Howdy," figuring that was probably how farmers talked.

The man continued to stare.

"I'm from the USDA," he said. "The name is Remo Croy."

The man in the chair hadn't blinked from the time Remo had entered. He was going on sixty seconds of staring at the TV screen without blinking. His face had a loose, slack quality.

"Hey, did you hear me? I said I'm from the USDA. We're looking into the situation here."

The man blinked once, slowly. His mouth barely moved, but a low, toneless question issued from him.

"What's that you say?"

"I'm from the USDA. I need to ask you some questions about what happened here."

The man had his arms flopped over the sides of his recliner. The arm opposite Remo's position came up casually with a repeating shotgun. It smacked solidly into his free hand, and the farmer began twisting out of his seat in a preattack posture.

"USDA bastards! You broke my back!"

Remo moved in. It was no contest. While the farmer was still twisting around to draw a bead, Remo yanked the double-barreled shotgun out of his grasp. It came easily.

Stepping back, Remo broke the action, ejected the fat red shells and, as the farmer came out of his seat bellowing, Remo casually made the twin barrels bend in opposite directions like a candelabra.

The farmer took in this example of raw power, blinked again and sat back in mute, sagging defeat.

"Do with me what you will," he said woodenly. "You already broke my heart."

"Hey, fella," Remo said gently, "I'm not here to hurt you. We're just looking into what happened out here."

"Don't fool with me. I know you Agriculture Department people are behind it. You and your genetic experiments, tampering with Mother Nature. Don't think because we're simple people out here we can be fooled. Not for a minute. We know it was your infernal bees that ran the corn down."

"Bees?"

"United States Department of Agriculture bees," the farmer snapped. "Bred to wreak havoc and make foul mischief. Which is what they done here."

"That's crazy! Who in their right mind would breed bees to ruin a corn crop?"

"The same ones who spent billions of dollars flying a man to the moon, where the soil won't yield and there's no air to breathe."

"That's a big leap in logic," Remo argued.

"I seen it all on the TV."

Remo looked at the screen. The station was coming up to its top-of-the-hour news segment. A purple-haired girl of about seventeen with jet black lipstick began reciting the headlines, pausing only to crack lime green bubblegum between items.

"New strain of voracious insects strikes at the heartland. Entire farms in Iowa have been leveled. Is there a connection to the mysterious assassin-bee deaths on both coasts that have authorities baffled? With us now is Fox star-reporter Tamara Terrill. Tammy, what's the latest?"

The familiar figure of Tammy Terrill appeared, clutching a microphone in her white-knuckled hands.

"Heather, official Washington is being stonily silent on this latest event in the looming insect crisis, but officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture are issuing heated denials that they are behind the outbreak of vicious insects."

"How are these denials being met, Tammy?" the news reader asked.

"With skepticism. I myself have been investigating this threat for, oh, almost thirty-six hours now, and I don't believe a word of it. They're hiding something. Just like on 'X-Files.'"

The anchor nodded in agreement, adding, " 'X-Files' rules. And it's on Saturdays now."

"Cool," chirped Tammy.

In his recliner, the farmer was also nodding. "See? Proof positive."

"That's no proof!" exploded Remo. "It's just two media dips throwing wild speculation into the air to see where it will land."

"It landed," the farmer said miserably, "in my corn."

"Look, I'm serious about looking into this. Can you tell me why some farms were stripped clean and others untouched?"

"Any fool can plainly see the why in that!" the farmer exploded.

"Well, I'm a fool from New Jersey. Humor me."

The farmer got up. He was taller than Remo expected. He walked with a stoop to his porch. There didn't seem much fight left in him, so Remo followed him out.

Standing out in the fading sunlight, he waved a plaid arm as if to encompass all of Iowa.

"What you're looking at is the first crop of the new Super Yellow Dent corn. Fool geneticists said it would resist corn borers, worms, cockleburs, you name it. Nothing could touch it. Nothing could lay it low. I paid a third more for that seed as any corn I ever bought. The slickers who sold it to me said the only thing that could kill it was drought. Now look at it. Bugs buzzsawed through it like no one's business."

The man whipped a red handkerchief out of the back pocket of his overalls and wiped his eyes on both sides. There was no moisture there. Remo figured the farmer had already cried himself out.

"I'm sorry this happened to you," Remo said simply.

"I got took. That's all there is to it. I got took for all I had. Super Yellow Dent is supposed to give off an odor that was poison to any pest known to prey on corn. Instead, it seemed to have drawn a worse pest than anyone ever heard of."

"Maybe it wasn't the corn."

The farmer expectorated noisily. "Oh, it was the corn, all right. And I can prove it. You can, too."

"How's that?"

"Take a survey of all the cornfields out this way. The ones that got hit grew Super Yellow. The ones that got off soot-free was ordinary corn. Golden Dent. Boone Country White. Champion White Pearl. Silver Mine. Early Huron. You name it. Everything except Super Yellow Dent, the savior of the corn farmer." The farmer spit a second time angrily.

The Master of Sinanju appeared at that point. He was carrying an ear of corn before him, carrying it by the corn silk, as if it were a distasteful yellow dropping.

The farmer straightened with a start of surprise. "Who in hell is that?"

"My colleague," said Remo.

"Looks more like a refugee from Chautauqua Week, you ask me my opinion."

"Behold, Remo," exclaimed Chiun, lifting his prize high.

"It's an ear of corn. So what?"

"See how it has been chewed on one side and not the other?"

Remo took the ear. It was chewed on one side. The other side showed rows of tiny kernels, each one indented as if nicked by a cold chisel.

"Looks like the stuff that survived had the moisture sucked out of it," Remo remarked.

"You idjit!" the farmer bellowed. "Don't you know corn? That's Dent corn. Them indentations are perfectly natural."

"I never saw corn like that," Remo said defensively.

"That's because Dent corn is purely cattle feed. You boil and bite that stuff, and it'll crack your teeth apart worse than Indian corn."

"Oh. What do you make of the fact the bugs ate only one side?"

"A freak of nature. That's what I make of it."

Chiun shook his head firmly. "Many ears show such signs."

The farmer took the ear from Remo, examined it with methodical interest, then stepped off his porch into the field.

He foraged about until he had picked up a double handful of corncobs. Every example had been stripped on one side and one alone.

"This is powerful fascinating," he muttered.

"Mean anything to you?" asked Remo.

"I could be wrong," he said, looking at the corn and not them, "but I would swear these ears were all chewed at from an easterly direction. The western sides are just fine."

"So what does that mean?" asked Remo.

"It means the pestiferous critters or whatever they were that ripped through my corn were headed away from the hellish place that spawned them, namely Washington."

"There is something else," said Chiun.

"What's that?" asked Remo.

"The corn has been chewed but not consumed."

"Can't be," the farmer snorted.

"Why not?"

"Insects don't chew through corn for purely mischief's sake. They need to eat. I don't know what new species of bug committed this travesty, but I do know it needs to eat. And if it ripped up my corn without eating any, that means but one thing I can think-"

"What's that?" asked Remo.

"It ain't no insect made by God, but something else entirely."

Remo looked to the Master of Sinanju. Chiun beamed back at him. "Perhaps it was a not-pest," he said to the farmer but really for Remo's benefit.

Neither the farmer nor Remo knew what to make of the Master of Sinanju's comment, so they said nothing.

From the farmer's house, Remo called Harold Smith.

"Smitty, we don't have much, but here it is. Looks like every farmer that was hit grew a new kind of pest-proof corn, called Super Dent."

"Super Yellow Dent. Get it correct," the farmer's voice called from outside.

"Super Yellow Dent. According to a farmer who was hit-"

"And don't call us farmers. My pappy was a farmer. His pappy was a farmer. I'm an agribusinessman. I can not only say it, I can spell it, too."

"-this stuff was the only corn that got hit. Everything else survived. You should check it out," finished Remo.

"That is very odd, Remo."

"Also, I think we need to drop our USDA covers," Remo added in a lowered tone of voice.

"Why is that?"

"Tammy Terrill and Fox are painting the USDA as the fountain of all evil. I had to take a doublebarreled scattergun away from the farmer I just questioned before he could perforate me with it."

"I will look into the supercorn theory, Remo."

"Add this to the mix," Remo said. "According to Chiun, the things that leveled the cornfields out here chewed but didn't swallow. And they traveled from east to west. Only the eastern sides of the cobs are stripped clean."

"What kind of insect is attracted to a plant and does not eat it?" Smith asked.

"Search me. Maybe one that's bred to wreck crops."

"Pesticide-resistant crops, in this case," Smith mused.

Dead air filled the line for too long, so Remo asked, "Anything on the dead talking bee?"

"The USDA laboratory is working on the corpse right now. I hope to have something soon."

"Okay, where next?"

"The FBI has generated another profile. It paints a portrait that fits only one individual my computers can find-Helwig X. Wurmlinger. It is time you paid that visit to his laboratory."

"There goes my date ...."

"You are dating again?"

"Yeah," said Remo defensively. "Why are you surprised?"

"Because you did not request a background or marital-status check from me this time."

"That's right. I didn't. I guess I have a good feeling about this one."

"You said that about the last three."

"This is an extragood feeling. Even Chiun likes her. "

"That is surprising."

"Yeah. I think he has a good feeling, too. Or maybe he's just taken by her last name."

"Which is?"

"Subject to change," said Remo, who then hung up, knowing that when the implications sank in, Harold Smith would start reaching for the Axid AR or Pepcid AC or Tagamet HB-or whatever he was using to ease his chronic heartburn these days.

Chapter 34

The package was marked Rush.

No surprise there, thought USDA entomologist B. Eugene Roache of the USDA Honey Bee Breeding Center and Physiology Research Laboratory in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

By now, everybody was reading or hearing about the new strain of killer bee that had struck on botfi coasts. They were calling it the death's-head bee, and the word was it was a new kind of Africanized Bravo bee.

It struck Roache as pretty strange from when first he heard about it. A new kind of bee appearing on opposite coasts in the same week. Normally, any new bee population entered through a single ecological gateway-and they wouldn't be bicoastal. Up from Mexico like the scutellata, sure. Down from Canada, maybe. But bees were not fond of the cold. The idea of bees coming down from Canada seemed farfetched.

A bicoastal entry suggested the cargo-ship theory. If it were just a Pacific deal, some kind of Asian superbee would be a possibility. With Atlantic attacks, the Asian theory looked thinner.

Those were the thoughts that ran through Roache's head as he waited for the rush package to be couriered from what he thought was another USDA laboratory in New York State. He had been alerted to the incoming package by a lemony telephone voice that said, "Identify this bee as quickly as possible."

That meant FABIS-the Fast Africanized Bee Identification System. They were better, surer methods of identifying a suspect bee to see if it were Africanized, or even a hybrid strain of Africanized European bee.

If it were a live bee, a stingometer would do the trick. It was an electrical box that recorded the number of bee stings-or attempted bee stings, since the suspect bee couldn't penetrate its hard shell. Four hits per second meant a Eurobee. Fifty-two hits, and it was a Bravo bee. That was how vicious the latter could be. It was the gang-banger among bees.

But this bee was coming in dead, and, after setting aside the foam and bubble wrap, Roache lifted the dead bee and set it on his workbench under a strong light.

He was surprised to see confirmation of the reports that it was a male honey bee drone. Or at least morphologically similar to one.

Under a magnifying glass, he examined the tip of the fat black abdomen. He gasped when he saw the stinger that shouldn't be there. It wasn't barbed, like a worker bee's or a yellow jacket's. This was the smooth hypodermic lance of a wasp.

"This bee can sting at will without penalty to itself," Roache muttered.

Excitement growing in his chest, he examined the death's-head markings at the back of the bee's fuzzy yellow thorax. It was distinctly a skull outline. It was almost perfect in its contours, like a tiny cameo.

"I have never seen anything like this. I can't believe anything like this exists," he muttered. "This is an entirely new species of bee."

Normally, the first step of the FABIS process was to dissect the bee in order to measure its significant components-the thorax, legs and wings. But this bee specimen came with an extra unattached wing, and Roache was loath to dissect the intact specimen just yet.

Taking up tweezers, he lifted the bee from the tabletop. He brought it closer to the light preparatory to setting it on an overhead projector for enlargement. He was curious to see the texture of the wing unassisted.

As the wing came closer to the desk light, he saw that the vein pattern was quite regular. In one corner, there was a tiny dot. A blemish of some kind.

Before Roache could take the wing away, a strange thing happened. Emitting a thin thread of smoke, the wing curled up and shriveled.

"Damn!"

The wing fell to the desktop. Roache blew on it. It continued to smoke. The stink was terrible. In the end, he was forced to press down on it to stop it from disintegrating completely.

The bee's wing, now curled into a blackened crisp of material, was pretty far gone, but the tip had survived. Roache placed it on the glass of the overhead projector anyway.

Clicking on the light, he projected the transparent image onto a clean white wall where preprinted outlines of Africanized and non-Africanized bee parts had been hung for comparative purposes.

The crisped wing was useless for comparison purposes.

But in the unburned corner, Roache saw the small dark blemish. He saw it clearly. And when he recognized it, his eyes all but bugged out of his head and he swore for ten minutes straight without repeating himself or running out of things to say.

Then he took his dissecting kit and attacked the complete specimen, his eyes bright and feverish.

Chapter 35

They could smell death from a mile away.

The air was thick with the rotten, sickly sweet odor of bodies in the early stages of decomposition.

"Uh-oh," said Remo at the wheel, and slowed the rented Jeep Grand Cherokee.

"Death hangs over these woods," intoned Chiun, drawing a silken sleeve to his nose and lips to ward off the offending stench.

"A lot of death," said Remo.

They came upon the string of parked vehicles just short of the end of the dirt road that led to their destination. The vehicles blocked the road completely, forcing Remo to brake.

Getting out, they moved off the road and saw the top of the mud hive as the morning began painting its flowing contours in smoldering colors.

"What the hell is that?" Remo wondered aloud.

"The den of iniquity and bees."

"Looks like a beehive."

"A fitting abode for the self-styled Lord of All Bees."

As they moved in a circular-approach pattern around the weird place, the low sound of bees awakening with the sun began to fill the morning air.

Remo paused in midstep. "Hear that, Little Father?"

"Bees. Bees that are not happy."

"That's exactly what I thought."

They moved closer. That's when they found the first body. He was dressed in military-style camouflage fatigues. An AR-15 rifle lay next to him. His eyes were open and they were empty. Literally empty.

"Check it out," said Remo.

Chiun knelt. He saw the empty red caverns already crawling with ordinary flies. The mouth lay parted. Chiun forced it open. The dead jaw popped in protest, but the sun sliding into the open mouth revealed no tongue, only a raw root and the dry enamel of teeth. The smell from the mouth was rank.

Chiun arose. Moving closer, they found more bodies, all without eyes or tongue. Some had fallen in such a way that their brain matter leaked from an ear or nostril-even from the mouth, as if they had died vomiting out their own brains.

"Just like that guy in Times Square," Remo said grimly.

Chiun nodded.

Checking a corpse wearing more stars and braid than a six-star general deserved, Remo discovered a black Velcro patch on the dead man's shoulders in place of insignia. He stripped it.

Under the black patch was an embroidered one showing an ear of corn over crossed muskets. It said Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia-E Pluribus Unum.

"Hey! These guys are from Iowa. And they're militia."

Chiun made a shriveled-yellow-raisin face. "Here, Remo, is proof that the fiend who breeds talking not-bees will be found lurking here."

Remo stood up. "Maybe. But if militia are involved, I wouldn't bet on their being right about anything. Most of these guys are weekend warriors with delusions of civil war."

Chiun's eyes grew intrigued. "A civil war might be advantageous. Prince against prince. There would be much work for the House. And opportunity for raises."

"Can it. Let's pay a call on Wurmlinger."

Chiun got in Remo's way. "Have you forgotten the first rule of survival?"

"Yeah. Don't walk into anything blind."

"The scourge that felled these soldiers is unknown to us. Perhaps it is the very plague that brought sweet peace to the land of garish corn."

Remo considered that a moment and went to a handy body. It turned out to be Commander Mearl Streep's, but he didn't know that.

Kneeling, Remo took the dead man's head in both hands and turned it to one side so the left ear was suspended over the dirt. Shaking vigorously, Remo got a sound like scrambled eggs being agitated.

Gray brain matter began dropping from the left ear.

It was already congealing. Remo hurried it along with a few more encouraging shakes.

When he got the head emptied, Remo set it off to one side and stood up to regard the malodorous custardlike pile with the Master of Sinanju.

"What do you think? Is that all his brain matter?" he asked.

Chiun regarded the dead man's head a moment. "Yes. It is more than enough to fill his narrow skull. No doubt his eyes and tongue lie in that puddle, as well."

"Brains chewed but not eaten. Just like the corn in Iowa."

"It is the curse of corn descending upon the sons of corn, Remo," Chiun warned. "Take heed. Stick with rice for the rest of your days."

"I plan to. But not the rice you're thinking of."

"What other rice is there?"

Remo grinned. "Jean Rice."

Chiun turned to face the mud nest. "Now we must confront the author of the not-bees."

"I only see one door."

"We are Sinanju. We make our own doors."

"Lead the way," said Remo.

The Master of Sinanju approached by the back way. Coming to the boxes where bees made unhappy sounds, he skirted them carefully. Remo did likewise.

Going to a window, Chiun peered in.

Remo took up a position beside him. When Chiun withdrew one eye from the porthole, he motioned Remo to take his place.

Peering in, Remo saw that he was looking at a bedroom. It was an ordinary-looking room except for one thing. The wallpaper was done in a distinctive spiderweb pattern.

Eyeing Chiun, Remo shrugged, as if to say, So what?

Chiun drew near and hissed, "This is the lair of the fiend."

"We don't know that yet. So let's not jump to conclusions until we talk to Wurmlinger."

"Look again," said Chiun.

When Remo did, he frowned.

"Look at the wall above the head of the bed, and tell me that I am not correct, as always."

Angling around, Remo's eyes fell on the spiderweb-pattern wall above the bed. What he saw made his mouth hang open in surprise.

Before he could say what was on his mind, Chiun had turned, emitting a warning hiss more venomous than that of a cornered cobra.

Remo spun, too.

The Master of Sinanju had dropped into a defensive crouch, long nails floating before his face, ready to snap out and fend off the threat that had slipped up behind them.

Hovering in the air only three feet before them was an unmistakable death's-head bee. Its tiny legs were gathered up under its body, and it made no move to attack.

"Remo," Chiun urged, "prepare to execute the Silken Noose with me."

Remo frowned. Out of the side of his mouth, he asked, "Is that the maneuver where one of us gets behind an opponent while the other distracts him from the front?"

"No, you are thinking of the Meeting Palms," hissed Chiun. "The Silken Noose requires-"

The hanging bee interrupted his next words. In a voice tiny but loud enough to be heard clearly, it said, "Fools! How dare you molest the one who is protected by Bee-Master."

"Bug off," said Remo, whose own hands were crossed at the wrist before his chest in case the bee made a lunge at him.

"This dwelling, and all who dwell within, are under the all-encompassing protection of the Bizarre Bee-Master."

"Bizarre is right," grunted Remo. "You zap those nuts in the camouflage outfits?"

"They dared to thwart the Bee-Master's supreme will."

"Looks like they tried to hit Wurmlinger the Weird."

"And they paid the ultimate price, as do all who challenge the true protector of the insect kingdom."

"I don't know what makes me feel stupider," muttered Remo to Chiun, "having a conversation with a bee or having the bee parrot dialogue out of an old comic book."

"His stinger is not made of paper," warned Chiun.

"Gotcha. Okay, bee. Let's lay our cards on the table. We're here to talk to Wurmlinger. You planning on getting in our way?"

"No," said the bee. "I am but a guard bee. The wrath of the Bee-Master will soon be upon you, would-be thwarter."

"In that case, you're so much beeswax."

Without warning, Remo turned in a flashing sidekick. His foot snapped out with such blurred speed that it had returned to the ground before the bee could react.

The bee, however, continued to float in place, unfazed.

"You missed," it taunted.

"Yes, you missed, Remo. How could you miss?" Chiun demanded.

"Look at my foot," Remo undertoned.

Chiun did. Remo's right foot rested on the ground. It was barefoot. His Italian loafer was missing.

A moment later, it dropped from the sky to catch the waiting bee unawares.

The open mouth of the shoe enveloped the bee. Bee and shoe hit the ground. Reacting with perfect timing, Remo's fist jammed the shoe into the ground. There came a satisfying crunch.

"Got the little bugger!" he crowed.

Recovering his shoe, Remo shook it out. A thoroughly mashed bumblebee fell out. After it hit the dirt, it didn't twitch. Not once. Its wings relaxed open in death.

Grinning, Remo restored his shoe to his foot. Facing the Master of Sinanju, he said, "I'm learning."

"Have you forgotten the wrath of the Bee-Master?"

"I'm more interested in talking to the Bee-Master himself."

With that, Remo went around to the front door and lifted his fist as if to knock. His knuckles traveled a short way. When they struck the door, it traveled a longer way.

Right off its hinges and across the living room.

Remo went in after it, calling out, "The jig's up, Wurmlinger."

A toilet flushed. And a cracked voice asked, "Who is there?"

"You remember us."

A door fell open with a creak, and around the corner of the door, Helwig X. Wurmlinger peered. He blinked his magnified tea-colored eyes slowly. He was very pale.

"What are you two doing here?" he demanded.

"We just snuffed your superbee. He gave you up first. You might as well come clean."

Chiun had slipped into the room, too, to take a position beside his pupil. "Yes. Your perfidy is known."

"Perfidy? I have committed no perfidy," Wurmlinger said.

"The bee told us everything," Remo bluffed.

"Bee. What bee? How could a bee tell you anything?"

"It talked." Remo folded his arms before him as if to signal that he would listen to no BS to the contrary.

Helwig X. Wurmlinger looked back at Remo as if Remo were mad. "You are mad," he said.

"P.O.'ed is closer to the truth," said Remo, who shot across the room and dragged Wurmlinger into the living room by the collar of his white smock.

"Unhand me!" he complained.

Remo frisked him by patting his pockets. He frisked pretty hard. Wurmlinger went, "Ouch... yeow," and made other noises of pain.

When Remo was finished, he marched Wurmlinger into the spiderweb-motif bedroom.

"The bee that talked said he worked for the Bee-Master," Remo was saying. "Name ring a bell with you?"

"Yes."

Remo shoved Wurmlinger's face to the wall where a yellowed poster hung over the bed, featuring a grim face enveloped in an electronic helmet. It looked like the head of a chromium bee with crimson compound eyes.

"Explain this."

"That is my poster of Bee-Master," Helwig Wurmlinger said.

"It's a poster of yourself. I don't know how or why you did it, but you've bred a bee you can control with an electronic helmet."

"Are you insane? The Bee-Master is only a comic-book character. He doesn't exist."

"Then why do you have his poster over your bed?"

"Er I-"

"Your hesitation betrays you," Chiun intoned, bringing his long, deadly nails up before Wurmlinger's long, nervous face.

"Go ahead," said Remo.

"This is very embarrassing."

"Not as embarrassing as having your head squeezed off your neck..."

Just then, the air filled with the growing metallic sound of a million angry insects.

"There is that sound again," Wurmlinger gasped.

"What sound?"

"The sound that killed all those men."

"Uh-oh," said Remo, looking to the window.

Chapter 36

"Here. Hold this guy," Remo said as the high, angry sound grew louder, and Chiun accepted Helwig Wurmlinger's neck from Remo's grasp.

Moving to the detached front door, Remo lifted it and rushed it back to the doorway. The hinges were ripped loose, so he couldn't rehang it. Instead, he set it tightly in the door frame and leaned against it with his shoulder.

"I think we're okay," he called out.

The sound grew in volume and insistence.

Chiun went to a side window, taking Wurmlinger with him. The entomologist had to walk stooped over because of the difference in height between him and the Master of Sinanju.

From the bedroom window, Chiun asked, "What do you see, Remo?"

"Nothing," said Remo. "It's just a sound."

Chiun's facial wrinkles gathered up tightly. "I, too, see nothing."

Helwig Wurmlinger said, "I saw nothing when those men were killed. But it was dark."

"The not-bee informed us that the wrath of the Bee-Master was about to descend upon our heads. What is the wrath of the Bee-Master?" demanded Chiun.

"I have no idea," Wurmlinger said uncomfortably. "But it does sound rather beelike."

From the other room, Remo called out, "Chiun, I think I have a little problem here."

The Master of Sinanju flashed into the other room. He took one look at his pupil holding the door in place and squeaked, "What is wrong?"

"I don't know. The door is vibrating. But I can't see anything."

Then the door started falling apart.

"Remo! Retreat! Retreat from what you do not understand!" Chiun cried.

"I gotta hold the door shut, or that sound will get in."

Then Remo's choices all fled. The door simply came apart. It disintegrated into showering sawdust.

Backing off, Remo cleared the entire room and crowded Chiun into the bedroom. He slammed the door after him.

His back supporting the door, Remo said, "I didn't see a thing. But the door acted like termites were eating it."

"Termites chew. They do not eat," Helwig WurmIinger said.

"Well, whatever they were, they made short work of that door. Chiun, how do we fight those things?"

"I do not know. But this one should."

Helwig Wurmlinger looked guilty as sin. He was sweating. He trembled.

Then the door at Remo's back began to buzz.

"Here they come!" Remo said. "Look, I can hold the door. Get out the back way."

"No, I will not leave you!"

"Listen to him," Wurmlinger said. "Whatever that sound represents, it will eat your brains in your head. There is no defense."

"Listen to him, Little Father," urged Remo, his voice buzzing in sympathy with the agitated door.

His face a tight web of spidery wrinkles, the Master of Sinanju narrowed his eyes in thought. Then, flinging Wurmlinger onto the bed, he bounded to Remo's side. His hands flashed out and caught Remo by the front of his T-shirt. He pivoted. Remo went flying.

Retreating to the bed, Chiun took Helwig Wurmlinger by the throat and made his voice loud enough to be heard over the weird sound that was infiltrating the room.

"Halt in your flight, creatures unknown!" he called.

The sound filled the room. There was nothing visible, just a weird humming as if the air had been electrified.

In a corner, Remo crouched, his eyes going everywhere. His senses were telling him he was surrounded. But he could see no threat, only hear it. Cold sweat broke out all over his body.

Then a sharp sting made a red bump on one thick wrist. Remo slapped at it.

"Chiun..."

"Cover your ears," Wurmlinger screamed. "They get in through the ears."

Remo slapped his hands over his ears. He felt something tickle his left nostril. Expelling air from his lungs, he blew the unseen irritant out. Then, drawing in a deep breath with mouth closed, he sealed his nostrils shut against invasion and waited.

Through his pressing hands, he heard the Master of Sinanju.

"If my son is harmed, I will break this one's neck! Do you hear, Master of Bees? If you do not retreat, this man who you claim to protect will die at the hands of the Master of Sinanju."

The sound continued permeating the room.

Chiun's tight face was resolute. Helwig Wurmlinger was oozing perspiration from his face and neck. His hands covered his own ears, and his eyes were pinched shut against the eye-consuming phenomenon.

"I warn you," Chiun said.

The sound seemed to pause. For a moment, it changed pitch as it gathered itself into a tight ball in the center of the room.

Chiun's eyes went to the compressed source of that sound. Still, he saw nothing, but every sense screamed the threat had contracted to a space that was no greater than that of an egg.

For almost two minutes, there was a standoff. Chiun squeezed Wurmlinger's bony throat with sufficient skill that the scientist could just only breathe, although his face was turning redder by the moment.

In a corner, Remo crouched in a defensive posture entirely unbecoming a Master of Sinanju. But he was facing a threat no Master had ever before encountered and against which he had no defense.

While Chiun held the balance of power in his bony hands.

At the end of two minutes, the humming, much subdued, even dejected, retreated from the room. Their eyes followed it even though it was really their ears that tracked its evacuation.

The unseen creatures poured from the mud nest of Helwig Wurmlinger and disappeared into the early-morning light.

When it seemed safe to do so, Chiun released Wurmlinger's throat. Remo came out of his crouch, his hands dropping to his side.

For a moment, he stood there rotating his thick wrists absently. His T-shirt was drenched in his own perspiration.

"What happened?" asked Remo.

"I saved you," said Chiun.

"I know that. But what-?"

Chiun eyed Wurmlinger. "The brain devourers valued the life of this man. It is time he explained why."

Helwig Wurmlinger looked back at the accusing gazes and flapped his hands helplessly. "I-I cannot," he managed to say.

And as they eyed the man, his head next to the fading poster of the Bizarre Bee-Master, Remo thought that there was a pretty strong resemblance between them. Especially around the chin.

Chapter 37

Remo fixed Dr. Helwig X. Wurmlinger with his deepset eyes and said, "You have a lot of explaining to do.

A giant cockroach walked into the room, twitching its feelers, and stopped and hissed at them loudly.

"Do not be alarmed," Wurmlinger told them. "That is a Madagascar cockroach. Perfectly harmless."

"What's it doing out of its box?" asked Remo.

"It is a pet. I keep it as a pet."

"Nobody keeps cockroaches as pets," said Remo.

Chiun floated over to the roach, which was as horny as an armadillo, and told it, "Do not hiss at me, vermin."

The cockroach hissed anyway.

And the Master of Sinanju brought a black sandal down on its back with a satisfying crunch.

Wurmlinger groaned and wrung his bony hands. "You had no right to hurt Agnes," he moaned.

"Worry about yourself," said Remo. "First, explain this poster here."

"That is the Bizarre Bee-Master."

"We know that."

"He was my hero as a child. My idol. I worshiped him."

"You're not a kid anymore. What are you doing with a comic-book hero on your bedroom wall?"

"I-I still retain a fondness for him. He was the lord and friend of the insect world. In many ways, I have patterned my life after his creed."

Remo frowned. "I don't remember any creed ...."

Behind his Coke-bottle gaze, Wurmlinger's teacolored eyes brightened. "You, too, were a Bee-Master fan?" he chirped.

"I wouldn't say fan. But I read a few issues here and there," Remo admitted.

"What was your favorite issue? Do you remember?"

"Get off it. Are you trying to tell us you've had that poster on your wall ever since you were a kid?"

"Yes. Since November, 1965. I never threw it away. I saved all my comic books, too."

"Why would you do that?"

"They are worth a lot of money. It is better than investing in gold. If you do not believe me, look under my bed."

Remo did. There were three long white cardboard boxes there. Remo pulled one out by the cutout handle, shooing away a scuttling spider.

"Mind you don't hurt my friends," Wurmlinger admonished.

"All I see are spiders."

"Wolf spiders. They eat paper-eating mites."

The box was filled with old comic books, each one bagged in clear Mylar and backed by a cardboard stiffener.

The first one was titled Tales to Amaze You and showed the Bee-Master wrestling with a glowing green dung beetle against the backdrop of the Egyptian pyramids.

"Hey, I remember this one!" Remo said.

"Which one?"

Remo turned the comic book around so the cover showed. Wurmlinger's eyes lit up with undisguised joy.

"Beware the Dung Beetle of Doom! Yes, that was one of my favorites, too. Bee-Master discovered a mummified dung beetle in a museum and accidentally reanimated it. They fought seventeen cataclysmic battles until finally BeeMaster found a way to restore it to an Egyptian tomb in Karnak. They actually parted friends. It was very touching. You see, the dung beetle meant no harm. Bee-Master hadn't perfected his cybernetic helmet yet, so he couldn't communicate with the beetle family. When he finally did, he understood that all the carnage and death the dung beetle had inflicted on mankind was because he was misunderstood. Did you know that one day beetles will take over the world from Man?"

"I thought that was cockroaches," said Remo.

Wurmlinger winced at the thought of dead Agnes. "Before cockroaches inherit the earth, beetles will reign supreme. They are a very hardy race."

Remo dropped the comic book back into its box. "Look, your story doesn't wash."

"I don't have a story," Wurmlinger said in an offended voice.

Remo began ticking off items on his finger. "Number one, the mastermind killing people calls himself the Bee-Master."

"With or without the hyphen?"

"We don't know. So far, we're only hearing this stuff from-" Remo hesitated.

"Unimpeachable sources," inserted Chiun.

Wurmlinger cocked a skeptical eyebrow, but held his tongue.

"Number two," Remo went on, while surreptitiously stepping on a scuttling silverfish that had scooted out from under the bed, "whoever did this has attacked only people or things involved with pesticides or anti-bug inventions like worm-proof corn, or to cover up his killings. That means he's a bug lover. You are a bug lover."

"I am no insectophobe," Wurmlinger admitted. "But being an insectophile is not indicative of guilt."

"Hah!" squeaked Chiun. "He even speaks like Bee-Master."

Wurmlinger flinched.

"He's big on bees, too," Remo added.

"Everyone should be concerned about Apis," Wurmlinger exploded. "Bees are our friends. They pollinate crops as diverse as citrus and cranberry. Without bees, we would starve within a matter of a year or two. And the United States is currently in the throes of a severe bee crisis."

"Yes," Chiun said in a low, menacing tone of voice. "One that you have authored, bee lover."

"No. Not that bee crisis. But a much more serious crisis than a few insectoid casualties."

"Explain," said Remo.

"We are in the fifth year of what I predict will go down in history as the Great American Bee Crash. We are losing our wild bees. Some are the victims of man's thoughtless savaging of their habitats. But the recent droughts have reduced plant forage, and severe winter snow has aggravated bee fragility to elevated levels. All over this continent, Apis is succumbing to bee mites, which make them more vulnerable to bee diseases."

"Bees have mites and diseases?" Remo asked doubtfully.

Wurmlinger cupped one thin ear in the direction of the bedroom window. "Listen."

Remo and Chiun focused their hearing on the glass.

Outside, the doleful buzz of honeybees went up and down the sad end of the musical scale.

"Those are ordinary bees. They were healthy when I left for Los Angeles. I have returned to discover them infected with tracheal and Varroa jacobsoni mites. Some are already so weakened that they have succumbed to foul-brood, a disease that reduces the poor bee to a jellylike state. If my bees have come to harm, no bees are safe. Not feral bees. Nor domestic bees."

Remo looked at Chiun. The Master of Sinanju maintained his stiff, unsympathetic countenance.

"Okay, let's say that's all true."

"It is true," Wurmlinger insisted.

"There is an FBI profile of the Bee-Master out there, and it fits you to a T."

"And a B," added Chiun tightly.

"The Bee-Master has to be an insect geneticist. And everyone's seen your Frankenstein bugs on TV."

"My genetic creatures are mere experiments."

"A dragonfly with eyes all over its body?" Remo demanded. "Where is that thing, anyway?" he asked, looking around the room.

"In my lab. I have many unusual specimens in my lab. As for the dragonfly, it is merely an adaptation of a gene-transplanting technique previously accomplished using fruit flies. You see, the gene that creates eyes has been discovered. Simply by transplanting this gene to other spots on the insect's body, eyes sprout. They are unseeing, because they do not connect to the visual receptors of the brain, but they are perfect in all other ways."

Remo frowned. "What about the other stuff?"

"I have experimented with titanium prosthetics, yes. I admit this freely."

"Prosthetic limbs for bugs?" Remo said sharply.

"There is a need. And my discoveries may have human applications."

"Yeah. Like breeding killer bumblebees."

"Such a thing seems impossible," Wurmlinger said.

"If you can transplant an eye gene, why not a stinger gene?" Remo said pointedly.

"It is feasible," Wurmlinger said thoughtfully, "but it would be harmless unless a neurotoxin gland were also created. Bumbles are equipped with ordinary venom sacs." He shook his long, twitchy head. "No, I cannot envision this."

Remo took him by the arm. "Let's have a look at your lab."

The lab was in the rear of the mud hive. A semicircular room with brown curving walls and a window resembling a blister, it smelled like a festering boil when Remo pushed the door in.

The dragonfly zipped past them. Chiun decapitated it with a flick of his extralong index fingernail. The dragonfly fell in two dry parts to twitch on the floor only long enough for a speedy spider to dart out from beneath a test-tube stand and claim it for his lunch.

Wurmlinger closed his eyes in pain.

Around the room, there were ant farms, cricket terrariums and a goodly number of bugs roaming around loose amid the forest of test tubes and experimental equipment.

Remo found no bees. There was a praying mantis with a steely mechanical forearm and a jointed toothpick for a rear leg in a glass box, but that was as weird as it got.

Chiun frowned at all that he saw, but he said nothing.

"Okay, let's see your sick bees," said Remo.

"Allegedly sick bees," added Chiun.

They went out the back door to the bee boxes.

Wurmlinger lifted out of the hive boxes a sample honeycomb on a frame. The bees on it were absent of motion and humming.

None resembled the death's-head killer bee. Wurmlinger exposed a dozen honeycombs, including ones clogged with tiny winged blobs that had once been living bees.

"This is what foul-brood does," Wurmlinger said morosely.

"Tough."

"Insectophobe!" Wurmlinger hissed, dropping the frame back into its box.

A few bees clung to his body, and the Master of Sinanju asked, "Why do they cleave to you, if you are not the BeeMaster?"

"I wear an after-shave whose chief ingredient is bee pheromone. These bees think I am their queen."

Remo rolled his eyes. They went back into the house. Chiun drifted into the bedroom and studied the Bee-Master poster once more.

Remo looked Wurmlinger dead in the eye. "I need to ask you a question. I need you to answer it truthfully," he said.

"Yes. Of course," Wurmlinger said earnestly.

"Are you the Bee-Master?"

"No. Of course not. Everyone knows that the Bizarre Bee-Master is really Peter Pym."

Remo looked at Chiun and Chiun at Remo.

"He is telling the truth. His heart rate is normal," said Remo.

"Yes," said Chiun, nodding sagely. "Now tell us where we can find this Peter Pym."

"You cannot."

"Why not?"

"Because he doesn't exist. He's purely a figment of the imaginations of the greatest comic-book geniuses of their time, Irv Ray and Steve Starko."

"What he means," Remo explained to Chiun, "is that Bee-Master is a myth. Kinda like Mickey Mouse."

"I have met Mickey in the fur. He lives."

"Well, Bee-Master doesn't hang around amusement parks. He's strictly a paper tiger."

Removing one of the comic books from its plastic, the Master of Sinanju examined the story within.

"The artwork is terrible."

"How can you say that about Steve Starko?" Wurmlinger said.

"Everyone looks Slavic," said Chiun, dropping the comic book with undisguised disdain.

Wurmlinger lunged, catching it before it hit the floor. "Are you mad? That issue is worth over four thousand dollars in mint condition."

"People pay that much?" Remo asked.

"More for key issues. The origin of Bee-Master is worth ten. In mint, of course."

Remo muttered, "Guess I shouldn't have let Sister Mary Margaret throw mine out."

"You should sue her. It's been done."

"Forget it. She's long gone. Listen, you're the etymologist."

"Entomologist. Not to mention apiculturist," Wurmlinger said proudly.

"There's some nut out there who can communicate with bees. Just like Bee-Master. How could someone do it in real life?"

Wurmlinger's face twitched in thought. "It cannot be done. Not the way Bee-Master did it. That part of the Bee-Master legend was sheer fantasy. And I cannot see anyone possessing that remarkable ability to turn his talents to anything other than the good of mankind and the insect kingdom."

"Take it from us, these death's-head bees are under the control of a guy calling himself Bee-Master," Remo said hotly.

"Has he made public announcements?"

"No." Remo hesitated. "We know this because two of the bees talked to us."

Wurmlinger's upper lip curled. "Bees cannot speak."

"The death's-head bee does and did."

"Yes," chimed in Chiun. "We heard it plainly."

Helwig Wurmlinger looked at them both. "A bee spoke to you?" he asked.

"Yes," said Chiun.

"In English?"

"Yeah," said Remo.

"And understood you in return?"

"That's right," Remo said.

"Bees," said Helwig Wurmlinger in his most authoritative voice, "cannot speak-or understand English if they could. They do not possess a vocal apparatus. Nor are they equipped by nature with language-processing centers in their brains. Queen bees do pipe, it is true. Unfertilized females quack in responses, yes. But it is not language. There is no grammar."

"Yeah, well, bumblebees aren't aggressive, either," Remo countered, "and look how many people are dead."

Helwig X. Wurmlinger had no answer to that.

Chapter 38

Harold W. Smith was waiting for word from Remo in the field.

Waiting was often the hardest part of the dour Smith's job. He had the ability, through his computer links and telephone eavesdropping techniques, of keeping track of everyone from the President of the United States down to his own wife, Maude. With no more instruction than a flurry of keystrokes, he could tell if a telephone was in use, a specific computer was on-line or, increasingly in these days of global positioning satellites, the location of almost any car in the U.S., given sufficient search time.

But Remo and Chiun continued to vex him. They refused to carry cell phones. Remo because he kept losing them, and Chiun because the old Korean had heard on TV an erroneous report that frequent cellphone use could lead to brain cancer. Smith doubted Chiun really believed this. It was just a useful excuse to avoid dealing with what he considered annoying technology.

While he waited, Smith sifted through strange reports coming off the wires.

In the Deep South, cotton fields had been decimated. As with the ravaged cornfields in Iowa, many fields were spared. Knowing what to look for, Smith got in touch with a USDA field agent and instructed him to look for problems with genetically engineered cotton.

A preliminary report confirmed his suspicions.

"The fields are a mess down here," the USDA field agent reported, after having dialed a Washington, D.C., number that was rerouted to Folcroft Sanitarium. "The young bolls are all over the ground, like madmen have been playing toss-ball with them. Losses will be in the millions."

"Get to the point," Smith instructed.

"They have a new crop of cotton growing down here. Supposed to be genetically engineered to resist weevils and cotton bollworms by emitting a natural pesticide. That's the crop that got it. The traditional crops are just fine. It's spooky. As if the pests that did this knew exactly what they wanted to hit."

"Verify and report back to me," Smith instructed.

Next, it was Texas wheat.

"Stubble fields down here look like they have been scythed," another unwitting USDA field agent reported.

"Are the fields pest-resistant?"

"That will take a lot of proving, but that's my guess."

"Verify this theory and report back."

Smith hung up and made a grim face.

The pattern was holding. From the killing of geneticist Doyal T. Rand to this. The mastermind was attempting to wage war on that segment of humanity that had waged war against the insects of the world. But why? What was his objective? Why were there no demands or statements of intent?

He checked his wrist Timex. Remo and Chiun had to have reached Wurmlinger's home. If, as the FBI had assured him, Wurmlinger was their man, the pair would make short work of him.

When a telephone rang, Smith knew from its muffled bell that it wasn't Remo. He had dreaded this call, but knew it was coming.

Extracting the fire-engine red telephone from his desk drawer, Smith set it on his glassy desktop and lifted the handset to his ear.

"I am aware of the situation, Mr. President."

"Our breadbasket is under attack," the President said hoarsely.

"Under selective attack," Smith replied calmly.

"How can you be so calm? This is a national emergency," the President sputtered.

Smith tightened the already too-tight knot of his tie. "The farms and crops have been targeted in such a way as to achieve a specific result."

"Result! What result?"

"That is becoming clearer by the moment, but I can tell you that it is tied in with the so-called death's head-bee attacks on both coasts."

"It is?" the President stammered.

"It is," Smith said with unflappable earnestness.

The Chief Executive lowered his voice to a dull hum. "Am I better off knowing about this, or not knowing about it? Politically speaking, that is."

"You are better off awaiting the results of my investigation, Mr. President."

"Those two. The one with the wrists and the old guy with the wrinkles. You have them on the case?"

"They are closing in on a suspect."

The presidential voice grew audibly relieved. "Then I'm going to sit tight. Do you think this will be over by the six-o'clock news?"

"I hope so. But the resolution may be one to which you are better off not being privy."

"It's that grisly, huh?"

"It is," Harold Smith said truthfully, "unbelievable."

"Okay. I'll just sit back and watch CNN and those Fox people. They seem to be right on top of this thing."

Smith hung up, visibly relieved. He had not wished to take the President into his confidence. Not if it risked exposing to psychological scrutiny the head of the supersecret government agency whose existence, if it were revealed, would surely topple his administration.

There was no telling how the Commander in Chief would react to descriptions of talking killer bees. It was more than possible that he would conclude that Harold Smith had slipped into senility and give the one lawful order a U.S. President was chartered to give CURE.

Disband.

Smith had been concerned that the talking bee's discovery of Folcroft might precipitate such a drastic step, but in truth, it had been such an unbelievable thing that he had all but put it out of his mind. For to disband CURE would be to bury it forever, along with its obscure director.

Smith patted the poison pill he kept in the watch pocket of his gray vest against that dark day and returned to monitoring his system. He wondered how the USDA Honey Bee Research Center was doing with the death's-head-bee specimen.

Chapter 39

The wires were buzzing with report after report.

"Down south, the cotton's been cut down," an intern said breathlessly. "Isn't that great?"

"Fantastic!" Tammy agreed. "I've always wanted to tour the Deep South."

She was packing her overnight bag and calling down to the cameraman pool when the intern poked her green-streaked blond head into Tammy's New York office and relayed another bulletin.

"Texas wheat's come a cropper!"

"I love it!" Tammy screeched. "I can just see me now, doing a dramatic stand-up against waving fields of amber grain."

"Breakfast-cereal prices will go back through the roof again."

"Who cares? I'm a certified media star now. I can afford any size Wheaties they make."

And she could. Her bee report had electrified the nation.

Then her news director showed up and closed the door behind him, leaning his body against it and grinning from ear to ear.

"Guess what?" he asked.

"Don't tell me-California oranges are so much juicy pulp?"

"Not yet. But we think it's coming. We're retitling the 'Fox Death's-Head Superbee Report.'"

Tammy's eyes flared like blue brakelights. "You can't do that! It's the main hook."

"It's going to be called 'The Tamara Terrill Report.' Congratulations, kid. You've made the big time."

Tammy shot a fist into the air. "I have my own show!"

"That's right. And we're going live this afternoon, so get that saucy little butt of yours ready."

"But I'm going to Texas."

"Make it Alabama. Cotton is white. It'll show up better on the screen. You'll premiere in a field of smashed cotton."

"Just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz!"

"I think that was poppies. Just get ready, Tam."

"I've been ready ever since I graduated from broadcast school," Tammy exulted.

After Smoot had left, she finished packing and stopped to close her office window against the April chill.

A fuzzy bee zipped in before she could complete the task. She caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of her eye. It seemed to look back with its skull emblem. Her blood ran cold as fifth-place ratings. By then, it was too late. The window had thunked into place.

Tammy stood rigid for a moment, thinking.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't see it," she said to herself as a cold trickle of perspiration ran down the gully of her back.

Swallowing hard, she went to her desk, grabbed her bag and steeled herself to make a dash for the door. If she had to, she'd brain the bee with the bag.

Tammy took three steps. And froze.

The killer bee floated between her and the shut door. It hung on its blurry wings, tiny legs suspended like the landing gear of a miniature helicopter.

Then a tiny voice said, "Tamara Terrill!"

"Who's there?" Tammy called to the door in a dry, nervous squeak.

"Tamara Terrill," the voice repeated. "You have been chosen."

"Me?"

"Chosen for an important destiny."

The sound seemed to be coming from the door. Tammy was virtually certain of that. But it wasn't muffled as it should be. It was just small, almost tinny.

"Whoever you are, I need a quick favor," Tammy whispered urgently.

"What is that?" the tiny tinny voice asked.

"First, I need you to open that door. Then I need you to be very, very brave and jump on something for me."

"What is that?"

"I've got a killer bee in here with me and I need you to sacrifice your life for me."

"There is no need for that," said the voice that had to be coming from the other side of the door, despite its unmuffled sound.

"Oh, there is. I have my own show now. I need to survive. It's for the good of the network. You do have insurance, don't you?"

"You are in no danger," the tinny voice assured her.

"I'm staring down a death's-head super-duper killer bee, buster. I most definitely am in danger."

"I am the bee."

"Huh?"

"You are speaking with one of the drone bees of the Bizarre Bee-Master."

Tammy blinked. "I am?" She gulped.

The bee floated closer.

"There is no one on the other side of the door. I am speaking to you," said the voice, which to the dazed Tammy started to sound as if it might be coming from the bee.

"This is a joke, right? Somebody in the writing staff is playing ventriloquist."

"This is no joke. Upon your shoulders rests the awesome responsibility for dissemination of the Bee-Master's demands to a trembling, unsuspecting world."

The voice sure sounded as if it was coming from the bee.

"I like how you talk," Tammy said. "But I don't understand a thing you're saying."

"I wish you to interview me."

"A bee?"

"Yes."

"You want me to interview a bumblebee on live TV?" Tammy repeated.

"It will be a television first," assured the bee.

"And if I don't, what? You're going to sting me or something?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you have failed your insect brethren."

"My insect what?"

"Obey the commands of the Bee-Master, and you will go down in history, Tamara Terrill," the bee insisted.

Tammy frowned. "Television history or history history?"

"Both," said the voice that was definitely coming from the bee. "For the Bizarre Bee-Master is about to reveal himself to the world."

"Now wait a minute. You've been assassinating people, right?"

"I have been exacting revenge," the bee countered.

"And covering it up by siccing your killer bees on assorted medical examiners."

"I was not yet ready to reveal myself to the world at large," the bee said flatly. "Now that my Revenge program has been implemented, that time has come."

"Gotcha. But now you do?"

"That is correct. The Bee-Master is weary of all pretense, all secrecy. It is time mankind knows the incredible truth."

"Okay, I got it. So answer one last question-why me?"

"Because my chosen publicity organ, the Sacramento Bee, has been ignoring my faxes."

Tammy's blue eyes narrowed. "Didn't one of their editors just die?"

"No," said the bee calmly. "He did not just die."

"Oh," said Tammy, understanding perfectly. She reached for her desk telephone. "Well, I guess you and me are about to share the most famous two-shot in broadcast history."

The bee showed that it was more than just a talking bee when it jumped on the switch hook, cutting off the line.

"No tricks," it warned.

"Honey, I wouldn't double-cross you for Ricki Lake's ratings."

"Don't call me honey," buzzed the bee.

"Oh, right. It's sexist."

"No, it is offensive to bees."

"Good point," said Tammy as the bee jumped off the switch hook so she could complete her call. "I'll try to remember that."

Chapter 40

"Okay," Remo was saying, "you're not the Bee-Master."

"I used to wish I was," Dr. Helwig X. Wurmlinger muttered wistfully.

"But someone is."

"Someone does seem to have bred genetically superpowered bees," Wurmlinger admitted.

"And something else," Chiun inserted. "A swarm of things that drone and are invisible to the eye."

"There are some species of bees that are quite small," Wurmlinger said, "but they are not invisible. I have never heard of an invisible insect."

Chiun began to pace the room. "If these creatures are truly invisible, how do we know that one does not lurk here in our midst, observing all?" he asked suspiciously.

"It's possible," Remo said worriedly.

"It is not possible," Wurmlinger snapped. "Bees cannot be invisible."

"Name one reason why," challenged Remo.

"No such bee has ever been discovered."

"If you weren't looking for invisible bees, you wouldn't find them."

Wurmlinger blinked. He had no ready answer to that.

"Perhaps they are not invisible, but exceedingly tiny," he said after some time. "Trigona minima, for example, is the size of a mosquito."

"It's a thought," Remo acknowledged.

"It is a good thought," said Chiun.

They went to the door, which had been gnawed to sawdust by the invisible swarm of insects.

Wurmlinger scooped up sawdust samples into a dustpan with a whisk. He brought this into his insect lab and started preparing glass slides of sawdust samples.

While he was doing that, Remo and Chiun examined the loose dust in the pan. They were very intent in this work. Their eyes didn't blink at all.

Wurmlinger noticed this and asked, "What are you doing?"

"Looking for tiny bugs," said Remo, not looking up.

"Insects so small would be microscopic-or nearly so."

"That's what we're looking for," Remo said, nodding absently.

"You would need Bee-Master's superacuity compound goggles to see such a thing," he said tartly.

"We work with what God gave us," Remo replied distantly.

Shrugging, Wurmlinger clipped the first prepared slide into his microscope. Several minutes of careful observation revealed only sawdust. The grains were marvelously fine, as if run through an infinitely refined disintegrating process.

The next slide was the same. The third also showed no evidence of insect parts.

Wurmlinger was selecting yet another slide when Remo asked rather casually, "What kind of bug is all mouth and has only one eye on the center of its forehead?"

"Why, no insect known to man," Wurmlinger told him.

"Check this out," said Remo, handing over a pinch of sawdust he had lifted from the dustpan.

He did not look to be joking, so Wurmlinger caught the pinch in a glass slide, covered it and clipped it in place under the microscope tube.

When he got the correct resolution, he saw it, lying on its side. It had eight barbed legs, classifying it as a member of the arachnid family, which included spiders and scorpions. Except it possessed wings, which was impossible. Arachnids do not fly.

Lifting a probe, he moved the specimen around in its sawdust bed, excitement mounting in his pigeon chest. He got it turned around so that it faced the lens tube.

"My God!" he gasped when its burning red cyclops eye glared back at him.

"You found it, huh?" Remo asked.

Wurmlinger swallowed his shock. His knobby Adam's apple bobbed spasmodically. Still, he couldn't get any words out. He nodded vigorously, then shook his head from side to side as his educated brain began denying the evidence before his very eyes.

But it was there. A long silvery green body, more like a scorpion than anything else in the arachnid family, boasting eight barbed and pincer-tipped legs and a pair of dragonflylike wings. And instead of a multieyed spider face, or the compound eyes of a fly or a bee, there was only a single smooth round orb mounted above an oval mouth with tiny serrated teeth all around the edges. The mouth made Wurmlinger think of a shark, not an insect.

"This is new!" he gasped. "This is incredibly new. This is a new class of insects. And I will go down in history as its discoverer."

"I found it first," Chiun squeaked.

"Are you accredited in any university?" Wurmlinger asked, regarding the old Korean with disapproval.

"No."

"Then your discovery does not count. I am one of the leading experts in the field of insects. This is my laboratory. Therefore, I am the discoverer of-" He paused, regarded his shoes a long moment while his long face worked. "Luscus wurmlingi!" he announced. "Yes, that will be its scientific name."

"You named that ugly thing after yourself?" Remo blurted.

"It is not ugly. It is unique. The name means One-eyed Wurmlinger."

"Is that anything like one-eyed wonder worm?" Remo asked dryly.

Wurmlinger ignored that. Reaching for a wall telephone, he said, "I must inform my colleagues before one of them happens to stumble upon a wurmlingi specimen in the field."

Remo beat him to the phone, pulled it bodily from the wall and handed it to Wurmlinger. Wurmlinger took it, saw the trailing wires and said, "Um..."

"Let's consider this classified for now, okay?" said Remo.

"You have no authority over me."

At that, Remo placed one hand on Wurmlinger's bony shoulder and said, "Pretend my hand is a tarantula."

Wurmlinger's eyes went to the hand, which started creeping up his neck on plodding fingers.

"Here comes the stealthy tarantula," Remo warned.

Wurmlinger flinched. "Stop it."

"The tarantula is on your neck. Feel its padded feet? Feel how soft they are?"

"I don't-"

"The tarantula is unhappy with you. It wants to bite. But you don't want it to bite, do you?" said Remo.

"No," Wurmlinger admitted, shrinking from the soft pads of Remo's fingers. He had tarantulas for pets. It was amazing how Remo's naked fingers felt like plodding tarantula feet on his neck.

"Too late," said Remo, his deliberately creepy voice speeding up. "The tarantula strikes!"

Wurmlinger felt a pinch. The hand withdrew, and Remo stepped away.

Wurmlinger had been bitten by tarantulas before. It was an occupational hazard. Their mandibles are poisonous, but not fatally so. Still, there is pain and numbness.

Wurmlinger felt no pain. But the numbness came on him very suddenly.

In a matter of seconds, he stood paralyzed on his feet. He swayed. Like a tree in the wind, he teetered from one side to the other. The horrible thing was that he couldn't move, couldn't stop himself from swaying.

Chiun padded up on one side and, when Wurmlinger swayed toward him, he blew out a strong breath.

The force of the breath pushed his swaying body the other way, and Helwig X. Wurmlinger felt himself tipping precariously even as his mind assured him screamingly that this couldn't be happening.

Fortunately, Remo caught him and carried him stiff as a stick to the bed and left him there, immobile. Time passed. Considerable time. During which the pair left without a word of farewell.

Having no better option, Helwig X. Wurmlinger drifted off to a mindless sleep.

When he awoke hours later, the slide containing the only known specimen of Luscus wurmlingi in the world was gone.

But at least they had left his Bee-Master collection intact.

And when he went out into the yard, the dead soldiers had begun fruiting, their mouths and empty eye sockets squirming with the most lovely maggots imaginable.

AT A PAY PHONE, Remo called Harold Smith.

"You want the bad news first or the good?" asked Remo.

"Why do you always have good news and bad news to report?" Smith asked glumly.

Remo looked to Chiun helplessly. Chiun got up on tiptoe, cupped the mouthpiece with one hand and whispered briefly into his pupil's ear.

"Because we're thorough," said Remo, into the phone. "Isn't that right, Little Father?"

"If we bear only bad tidings and not good, or good tidings, but no bad," Chiun said in a too-loud voice, "we would be accused of doing our duty without sufficient diligence. If in the future, Emperor Smith prefers not to know certain things, let him tell us of these things in advance and we will scrupulously avoid them in our travels."

Smith sighed.

"Give it to me as you wish," he said glumly.

"Okay," said Remo. "Wurmlinger isn't our man."

"How do you know this?"

"We know when a guy is lying to us. He wasn't. He's just a bug nut, pure and simple. And the only bees we found were sick ones."

"That proves nothing."

"But we found a whole bunch of dead guys scattered around. Ever hear of the Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia?"

Smith was silent, so Remo assumed he was working his silent keyboard. A sudden beep confirmed this. Then Smith said, "I have almost nothing on them other than they are commanded by a former corn farmer named Mearl Streep."

"Well, that gives us one solid motive. He jumped to the same conclusion Tammy Terrill did and tore off to avenge the cornfields."

"Odd," said Smith.

"What?" asked Remo.

"I have input his name, but the system keeps spell-correcting it and giving me information on a Hollywood actress."

"Forget it. Those guys are out of the picture," said Remo. "Oh, there was one of those talking guard bees here. It tried to warn us away from Wurmlinger."

"Is that not proof of his complicity?" asked Smith.

"Nope. Not to us."

"Then we are at a dead end," Smith said morosely.

"Not exactly. The Bee-Master tried to sting us again. This time, he sent one of those swarms after us. You know, the things that got that guy in Times Square."

"What did they look like?"

"They looked like the way bees sound, only louder and meaner."

"Excuse me?"

"They're too small for the naked eye to see. We beat them off, but captured one. I guess it died in all the excitement."

"You have another bee specimen?"

"Sort of. It's no bee. It looks like something out of a monster movie except it's smaller than a nit."

"Remo, an insect that small would be microscopic."

"This one practically is. And it's the ugliest thing you ever saw. What do you want us to do with it?"

"Bring it here."

"We're on our way."

Hanging up, Remo turned to Chiun. "I guess it's back to Folcroft for us."

Chiun held the glass slide up to the afternoon sun. "I pronounce you ...Philogranus remi."

"What does that mean?" asked Remo.

"Seed-lover Remo."

"Why are you naming it after me?" Remo Hared.

"Are you not both brainlessly drawn to corn seed?" huffed the Master of Sinanju.

Chapter 41

Edward E. Eishied couldn't be wrong. He wasn't wrong about Wayne Williams. He hadn't been wrong about the Green River Killer.

How could he be wrong about this?

All events leave a mark. All minds create emotional or circumstantial footprints. That was the key. Figuring out the whys and the wherefores of criminal acts.

A serial killer had been assassinating people who had only one thing in common: insects. They either killed them, or ate them and killed them. Therefore the unknown subject felt a kinship with insects.

That much seemed reasonable.

Eishied had generated a profile. Certain elements were basic. Well educated. A WASP. Drove a Volkswagen Beetle. It was amazing how many serial killers were WASPS who drove VW Bugs. The irony of that linkage had never occurred to Edward Eishied until these insect-related serial killings. He wondered if this might open up an entirely new psychological aspect to serial killers, but he had no time for that now.

He was the FBI's chief profiler, and the word coming back from ASAC Smith was that his profile was in error. An UNSUB fitting the profile perfectly had been investigated and it wasn't him.

When he received the e-mail message from ASAC Smith to that effect, Eishied had e-mailed back, "Then look for another UNSUB fitting that profile. I have never been wrong."

ASAC Smith had replied almost before the message was sent:

"Your profile is in error."

To which Eishied rebutted, "Your data may be in error."

Smith said nothing to that. Maybe he was steamed, but Eishied took the silence as a signal to keep working.

So he did.

There were certain unavoidables. The UNSUB had to be highly educated. An idiot doesn't breed new kinds of insects. That was a given.

The UNSUB was a Charlotte Hornets fan, but maybe that wasn't an indicator of geographic locality as much as a need to announce his kink to the world.

The longer Eishied pondered the facts in the case, the more maddening it became.

For some reason, his mind kept drifting back to his childhood. There used to be a cartoon character on TV. Bee-Man. No, Bee-Master. Yeah, that was the name. Guy could fly like a bee, sting like a bee and control bees like a queen bee, even though there was nothing fey about him. Other than his leotards, that is.

Maybe it was the long hours. More than likely, it was the growing indignation Edward Eishied felt that his ability as a profiler had been called into question. But he decided to have some fun with ASAC Smith. He began typing.

UNSUB was traumatized by multiple bee stings as a child. As time went on, he learned to master his fear of the insect kingdom. A more serious tragedy in his young adult life-possibly the murder of parents or spouse-had caused him to dedicate his life to causes he believes to be worthwhile. However, owing to trauma, even this positive expression takes a dark turn.

It was as near as he could dredge up the thirty-year-old memory of the origin of the Bizarre Bee-Master. "UNSUB's initials will be 'P.P.,'" he added, grinning in the privacy of his office. "Let that Smith bastard figure this one out," he chortled, and he pressed the Send key.

Chapter 42

Harold Smith was looking at the insect through a microscope borrowed from the serum lab of Folcroft's medical wing.

Remo and Chiun were hovering beside his desk like expectant parents.

"Brace yourself," said Remo as Smith brought the slide into focus. "It's uglier than sin."

"I have named it Philogranus remi," sniffed Chiun, "in honor of its corn lusts, but its hideousness of countenance also played a role in my decision."

Remo glared at Chiun.

"A minor one," Chiun amended.

Smith brought the slide into focus. His rimless glasses lay on the desk. One eye was pressed to the microscope eyepiece.

He said nothing. There was no gasp of surprise, no outburst or expression of shock.

But when he looked up from the lens, his grayish face was drained bleached-bone white.

"The mind that created this hellish thing," he said thickly, "is that of a twisted genius who must be stopped. This infernal insect has been bred to be a combination flying shark and multilimbed buzz saw capable of ripping through flesh, grain and wood in an instant. There is no defense against it. All it has to do is enter the human ear and attack the brain. Death is almost instantaneous. No wonder the various medical examiners found nothing." Smith actually shuddered.

"What's the latest on the farm crisis?" asked Remo.

"The swarm-and it appears to be a swarm-has reached California. There is considerable crop damage. But again, it is fiendishly selective. In this case, citrus growers experimenting with a new pesticide have been hit."

"Don't all farmers use pesticides?" asked Remo.

"Yes, of course," said Smith, uncapping a bottle of Zantac 75 and swallowing two dry. "But these-these vermin seem to be targeting only the latest or most advanced insect-resistant crops."

"Why not get them all?"

Smith considered. "To make a statement. Perhaps this is just the first wave."

"If this guy is so big on bees, he's not going to kill every crop. Bees pollinate crops. Take crops out, and bees are out of work."

Smith considered. "Very good, Remo. That is an excellent observation."

"But it still doesn't get us anywhere," Remo muttered.

Smith was about to acknowledge that unfortunate state of affairs when his computer beeped a warning of an incoming message. He called it up, read it and his jaw sagged.

"What is it?" asked Remo.

"It is the latest psychological profile from FBI Behavioral Science."

"I thought they gave up on that stuff after they fingered Wurmlinger."

"This particular profiler is the Bureau's top man. He has never been wrong. Until now."

"He still flogging the Wurmlinger theory?"

"No, he has revised his profile. It is radically different." Smith's voice grew marginally excited. "We may have something here."

Remo looked over Smith's gray-flannel shoulder at the buried desktop screen and frowned the longer he read.

"Smitty, that's Bee-Master he's talking about."

"Yes, of course."

"No. That's the story of how Peter Pym became Bee-Master, right down to being stung by a swarm of radioactive bees."

"I don't see the word radioactive."

"He left that out," said Remo. "Look, he's even claiming the guy has the initials 'P.P.' How can he know that from the facts of the case?"

Smith frowned. "He is the best. These profilers can perform miracles of induction."

"He's pulling your leg. You're just too stiff to see-"

Smith frowned. Remo looked out the window, and the Master of Sinanju paced the room. Back and forth, back and forth, in incredible concentration.

"What are you doing?" asked Remo.

"I am attempting to conjure up a vision of the wretch."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yes. This thing you call profiling is known to Sinanju, only it is called Illuminating the Shadow."

"Illuminating the Shadow?"

"Yes, from time to time, Masters of Sinanju were called upon to divine the identities of shadowy persons who plotted against thrones or had struck in vain against those thrones only to escape into the shadows. I am attempting to divine the identity of this man by piercing the shadows that surround him."

"Feel free," said Remo. "But if it turns out to be Lamont Cranston, we're no better off than we were before."

But Smith looked interested.

"I envision," Chiun said at last, "a Byzantine prince."

"Byzantium no longer exists," Smith argued.

"Told you it was a crock," muttered Remo under his breath.

"A prince of Byzantium who conceals his face from view with a crown of great complexity," added Chiun.

"Sounds like the Man in the Iron Mask," said Remo.

Smith hushed him. Remo subsided.

"This prince rules over a kingdom of subjects who are not of his flesh."

"Bee-Master rules over the insect kingdom," Smith said.

"But these subjects that are not of his flesh are not of any flesh," continued Chiun.

"Insects are not made of flesh, but of a material like horn," said Smith. "Very good, Master Chiun."

"I don't believe you two are doing this ...." Remo moaned.

"Can you envision where this person can be found?" asked Smith.

Chiun continued pacing. His face was twisted up in concentration, his eyes squeezed to the narrowness of walnut seams. "I know that this prince is drawn back to the scene of his depredations."

"Sure," said Remo. "The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime."

"No, that is not it," said Smith. "That is an old adage, but it is not exactly true. Criminals are not drawn to the scene of their crimes so much as they feel compelled to insinuate themselves into official investigations. It is very common that the chief murder suspect is the first person to offer eyewitness testimony or suggestions on how to solve the murder. It is a control issue with them."

"That's Wurmlinger again," said Remo.

"No, it is not Wurmlinger," said Chiun. "But another prince."

Smith was at his computer again.

"What are you doing, Smitty?" asked Remo.

"Calling up the facts in the Rand killing, the one that started this chain of fantastic events."

Smith skimmed the report carefully. "Here is something."

"What?" asked Remo.

"I hadn't noticed this before, but the killing of Doyal T. Rand occurred in Times Square at the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue."

"So? We knew that."

"There is an old saying that Times Square is the crossroads of the world. If one were to seek a specific person, you have only to stand on that corner long enough and that person will almost certainly appear there. Because sooner or later everyone passes through Times Square."

Remo grinned. "Somebody should set a trap for Saddam Hussein, then."

Smith shook his humorless gray head. "Our man first showed up in Times Square. - Perhaps he might return."

"Yes, he will return to the scene of his depredations, for he must," said Chiun firmly.

"You don't expect us to stand on a freaking street corner for the rest of our lives until he turns up again," said Remo.

"No, I will put the FBI on it."

"Good," said Remo.

"Not good," said Chiun. "For we must be the ones to vanquish this prince of Byzantium."

"You go, then. I have a date with a rich girl," Remo said.

Chiun started. "Jean is rich?"

"Won the lottery. Seven million bucks."

"Rich?" squeaked Chiun. "And you have not yet married her?"

"I don't marry for money."

"Then you are a dunderhead," spit Chiun. "She comes from the illustrious Rice family and swims in wealth, yet you stand there in your ignorant bachelorhood. For shame."

"I'll get around to her. Business comes first."

"See that you do," said Chiun.

Chapter 43

In a hotel room overlooking Times Square, a man calmly unpacked his suitcase.

It was a very large suitcase. It had to be to accommodate its contents.

Folded neatly inside was a black-and-yellow spandex uniform. The upper portion was jet black, while the legs were banded in alternating yellow jacket bands.

Standing in his boxers, he drew this on, carefully Velcro-ing and zippering the striking uniform that was his badge of identity.

The gauntlets of rubberized fabric fitted over his long, strong fingers. He stepped into the gleaming black boots, which squished when he walked, thanks to the honeycomb of suction cups on the bottoms of the thick soles.

Finally, he drew over his head the cybernetic helmet with its compound locust green orbs and retractable antennae. The helmet gleamed like a bee's skull forged of polished copper.

"I," he said in a deep, commanding voice, "the avenger of insects, am now ready to go forth and face my destiny."

Squishing with each step, he took the elevator to the lobby floor and, oblivious to the gawking and staring of common mortals, stepped out into the bustle of the crossroads of the world for his rendezvous with destiny.

OFFICER ANDY FUNKHAUSER had thought he had seen everything.

He was directing traffic when he happened to look at the corner of Seventh Avenue and East Forty-fifth Street.

There, standing calm as could be, was a man tricked up like a human yellow jacket, for Christ's sake.

The man crossed the street and came striding down as big as life and twice as stupid looking. Some pedestrians stared at him, while others just ignored him. This was New York. It took a lot to get a rise out of New Yorkers.

The man seemed not to be bothered by the attention. If anything, he walked with his shoulders squared and his stride more jaunty. He looked like the jackass to beat all jackasses, but he was the last to know it.

"Probably some kind of goofy Fox stunt," Funkhauser muttered, returning to his duties. Ever since that Rand guy died, people kept expecting killer bees to descend on Times Square.

It had only been a few days since the eyeless stiff had been carted off. And yesterday a beekeeper had come to lure away the swarm of bees that had congregated around the streetlight when it had all happened. Funkhauser had watched. It was amazing. The guy had put on protective gloves and net veil pith helmet and shinnied up the pole.

Once he'd gotten close, the bees just took to him like honey. They clung to his well-protected body like glued-on popcorn.

He'd come down, got into the back of his van that said Bee Busters on the side, and when he'd come out again, there hadn't been a bee in his bonnet. Or anywhere else on him, for that matter.

Times Square had quieted down since then, if Times Square could ever be said to quiet down, and Officer Funkhauser went about his duties when he heard the high, shrill humming.

His eyes went to the light pole, thinking the swarm had returned. But there was no swarm. What there was was an earsplitting buzz that swelled and swelled, sounding as if it was all around him.

Then a man screamed.

Funkhauser tried to fix the sound. It seemed to be all around him. A zit-zit-zit, like tiny air pellets zipping by.

A black-and-yellow figure jumped into traffic, clutching his coppery green-eyed head and twisting as if stung by a million bees.

No bees were visible, Funkhauser saw. There was just the guy, and he was screaming to beat the band.

He ran across Broadway, reversed himself and pitched to his left. That didn't shake whatever was eating him. So he dropped to the ground and rolled up into a tight ball.

There, he curled up like a bug set on fire, as the life quickly went out of him.

Funkhauser was at his side by that time. The droning had fallen quiet. It seemed to pour up into the sky. It was only a distant, fading ziii now.

If it hadn't, there was no way Funkhauser was going to get near the dead guy.

There was no question the yellow jacket man was dead. Nobody screamed like that just from pain. This guy made as if to scream the lining out of his throat.

One look, and Funkhauser decided against mouth-to-mouth and CPR.

The guy's mouth hung open, and there was no tongue.

"Oh, Jesus, not again."

He got the weird helmet off, and it was no surprise that the eyes were hollow caverns. Funkhauser replaced the helmet. That spared the gathering crowd the horrible sight of the dead man's eyes. Or lack thereof.

Jumping to his feet, Funkhauser blew a shrill blast on his police whistle. Impatient traffic was inching closer to him like a line of hungry tigers.

"Can't turn your back for a minute in this crazy town," he growled.

Chapter 44

Harold Smith took the call from B. Eugene Roache of the USDA Honey Bee Breeding Center in Baton Rouge.

"I have the results you requested," he said breathlessly.

"Have you been running?" asked Smith.

"No, I've been working."

"Then why are you so out of breath?"

"Because," puffed Roache, "I have just gotten off the wildest roller coaster of my professional life."

"Explain," prompted Smith.

"First, I attempted to examine the detached wing. Inadvertently, I held it too close to a high-intensity desk lamp. The wing shriveled up from the heat."

"That was inexcusably careless."

"Not all of it was burned," Roache went on urgently. "I saved a corner of it. When I projected it onto the wall, I saw something that almost gave me a heart attack."

"Yes?"

"This bee has a death's-head on its thorax. It's almost perfect. You couldn't get a more perfect skull if an artist painted it."

"I understand that," said Smith, voice growing impatient.

"I should have suspected it from that evidence alone. But I had no idea. Who would have thought it."

"Thought what?" Smith snapped, wondering why the man hadn't gotten to the point.

Roache's voice sank to an awed whisper. "In the corner of the wing was a machine-perfect black T in a circle."

"A marking you recognize?"

"A marking a five-year-old would recognize. It's a trademark symbol!"

Smith's unimaginative brain caught on. "Trademark?"

"Yes, a trademark. I examined the whole bee, and its right wing also showed the same marking. This bee is trademarked!"

"Then there is no question that the death's-head bee was created by some genetic program," said Harold Smith. "Just as certain enzymes and bacteria can be trademarked for commercial use."

"That was my thinking, too. Until I dissected the bee."

Smith's ears registered the low, amazed tone of the entomologist's voice, and he felt the first tingle of anticipation.

Chapter 45

By the time Remo and Chiun reached the street, it was over.

They had stationed themselves atop the Disney Store overlooking Times Square, watching the surging crowds below. The sun was going down. Lights were coming on all around Times Square. They had been at their post a little more than two hours when Remo spotted the man with the yellow jacket legs and green-eyed helmet.

"I don't believe this," Remo exploded.

On the opposite corner of the roof, the Master of Sinanju was watching a different quadrant of the square. His tiny ears were protected by padded earmuffs to ward against the brain-attacking insects.

"What do you not believe?" Chiun said thinly.

Remo pointed to the street below.

"Bug-eyed man at six o'clock low."

"The hour is not yet five. Why do you say six?"

Looking over, Chiun saw Remo's arm leveled at a comical figure striding down Broadway. He was dressed like a black-and-yellow insect. His step as he walked was springy. The antennae on his shiny forehead bounced happily.

"There's our Bee-Master!" Remo shouted. "Come on."

Remo raced to the door to the roof. Sensing the Master of Sinanju was not behind him, he paused. "Shake a leg, Little Father."

Chiun shook his head in the negative. "No. That is not him."

"What do you mean, it's not him?"

"Look at his legs. He is dressed as a wasp."

"Yeah. So?"

"A yellow jacket is a wasp, not a bee."

"That makes him a not-bee, right?"

"No," Chiun said stubbornly. "A not-bee is a thing entirely different. Go without me. For you go on a fool's errand."

Remo hit the stairs, flashing to street level faster than an elevator could carry him. By the time he got out into the rushing river of New Yorkers, there was no sign of his quarry.

Remo looked up Broadway. Then down. Then he heard the high, anxious droning filtering down from the sky.

Above him, Chiun gave a warning hiss. Remo knew that sound. He ducked back into the building and held the glass-and-brass door shut with both hands, and started wishing he had accepted that extra pair of earmuffs from Chiun.

The weird sound came and went quickly. When it was gone, Remo stepped out cautiously.

Moving with every sense alert because he had no defense against the voracious insects that were too small to see, Remo worked toward a gathering knot of people.

They were crowding around a dead man lying in the middle of stopped traffic. The dead man was dressed like a yellow jacket wasp. A cop was kneeling over the body. When he got the man's golden helmet off, the eyes behind the green compound lenses looked as if they had been gouged out.

Remo looked away from the dead man toward Chiun, still stationed several floors above, and shrugged his shoulders elaborately.

Chiun ignored him. Remo waved him down. Finally, the old Korean disappeared from the parapet edge.

When Chiun joined Remo a few minutes later, Remo was saying, "This doesn't make any sense. Look at him. Bee-Master's own bugs killed him."

Before Chiun could speak, a small voice at their side said, "That isn't Bee-Master."

Remo looked down. A boy of about thirteen with blond hair cut in a mushroom fade stood there.

"Who asked you?" said Remo.

"Nobody. But you called him Bee-Master. Everybody knows Bee-Master wears a silver cybernetic helmet with infrared goggles. That's Death Yellowjacket."

"Death Yellowjacket?"

"Yeah. He's much cooler."

"Not anymore," said Remo. "He's dead."

"That's not the real Death Yellowjacket, just some guy dressed like him for the convention," the buy said.

"What convention?" asked Remo.

The boy puffed out his chest. On his T-shirt's front was a legend of Day-Glo green and red: New York Comic Collectors' Spectacular.

"The comic convention," the boy said. "At the Marriott. I just came from there." He held up a fat sheaf of comic books sealed in clear Mylar envelopes.

Noticing this, Chiun asked, "Do you have any Donald Duck?"

"Naw. Nobody reads about ducks anymore. It's all superheroes."

By now, an ambulance was pulling up, and the police were pushing the crowd back.

"Did you see this guy at the convention?" Remo asked the kid.

"No. But there's a costume contest at six. He was probably dressed for that. Too bad he died. Bet he'd cop first prize."

Remo and Chiun swapped looks. Remo's was puzzled, and Chiun's was bland.

"Tell me, kid," said Remo. "Why would Bee-Master want to kill Death Yellowjacket?"

"He wouldn't. Bee-Master wouldn't kill anyone. He's old-fashioned that way. On the other hand, Death Yellowjacket kicks butt and takes no names."

"Humor me. If Bee-Master wanted to kill Death Yellowjacket, what's his motive?"

"That's simple. Death Yellowjacket outsells Bee-Master two to one. And bees and wasps hate each other anyway."

"Told you so," said the Master of Sinanju in a serenely smug tone of voice.

At the Marriott Marquis, they were told that the man in the yellow jacket costume was registered under the name of Morris Baggot.

They were about to leave when Chiun happened to look up and noticed a man in black spandex descending in one of the capsulelike glass elevators. His head was encased in a stainless-steel helmet mask with glowing red eyes.

"Observe," Chiun hissed.

Remo looked up. "Uh-oh." He called the desk clerk's attention to the descending elevator. "You wouldn't happen to know who that is, would you?"

The desk clerk did. "That's Mr. Pym," he said.

"Pym? Not Peter Pym?"

"That's right. Do you know him?"

"Only by reputation," growled Remo. "What's his room number?"

The clerk looked it up on his reservation terminal. "Room 33-4."

"Where's the comic-book thing being held?" Remo pressed.

"Ballroom."

"Thanks," said Remo, pocketing his FBI ID.

Taking Chiun aside, he said, "That's gotta be our guy. He's operating under Bee-Master's alias. Looks like he's headed to the comic-book show, no doubt to capture first prize in the costume contest now that Death Yellowjacket is out of the picture."

"We will vanquish him and avenge the stalwart wasp," vowed Chiun.

"First, let's check out his room."

They grabbed an elevator.

THE DOOR to room 33-4. opened easily after Remo stunned the electronic lock with the heel of his hand.

Inside, they found stacks of sealed comic books, with the price tags still on the Mylar envelopes. Remo whistled at some of the prices.

Under the bed, Remo found a carrying case with an ID tag in the name of Peter Pym, along with an address in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

"This guy takes his Bee-Master pretty seriously," said Remo. Setting the box on the bed, he forced it open. Inside was a purple plush shelf like a jeweler's display case except that in each depression sat a fat death's-head bumblebee instead of a precious stone.

Remo blinked. In that blink, his hands became pale blurs. When they stopped moving, the bees were so much mangled mush scattered at his feet.

"Whew! That was close," he said.

"You were in no danger," Chiun said dismissively.

"Only because I stung them first."

Chiun shook his head "They slept the sleep of things that do not live-except at the will of their master."

And stooping, the Master of Sinanju plucked one of the mashed bees from the rug and raised it to the level of his pupil's eyes.

"Look more closely, blind one. And behold the true nature of the not-bee ...."

Chapter 46

"What did you discover when you dissected the bee?" Harold Smith asked.

"At first," said B. Eugene Roache, "I was interested in taking measurements of the thorax, wings and legs. It never occurred to me to enter the body cavities and explore."

"Go on," said Smith, his voice growing tense. This entomologist's nervous urgency was infectious.

"The body parts of course did not correspond to the Bravo bee. I ascertained that from a casual examination. There is no such species as an Africanized bumblebee. But I wanted to record the measurements for future reference. As I was doing that, I felt the detached wing between my fingers. It felt wrong to the touch."

"Wrong?"

"I've handled many bee wings in my career. I know how they feel against naked skin. These were too slick, too smooth. A bee's wing feels something like old cellophane, if you know that texture. This was entirely different. So I did an analysis of it."

"What did you find, Dr. Roache?"

"I found," Roache said in a disturbed voice, "that the bee's wing was composed of Mylar."

"Mylar!"

"Yes. A man-made substance. At that point I attacked the bee's interior structure. What I found gives me the shivers. This bee is not a bee. It's man-made."

"Man-made!"

"Yes. Isn't that fantastic? Someone has engineered a replica bee. That means he's discovered the secret of how bees fly. We've been trying to crack that one for decades! Isn't that incredible?"

"Dr. Roache," Harold Smith said tightly. "Whoever created that bee has devised one of the most deadly killing tools ever unleashed on this nation. Against that threat, the secret of bee aerodynamics is unimportant."

"There's more. Its stinger is a tiny hypodermic needle. The entire abdomen is a reservoir for Africanized bee neurotoxin. It's not an Africanized killer bee, but it carried the same toxin. Isn't that ingenious?"

"Insidious," Smith said.

"And I'm not sure about this part, but the head seems to contain a scanning mechanism. I would have to examine it under an electron microscope, but I have the feeling there's a miniature television camera in there."

"In other words," said Smith, "the bee is a combination of flying spy and assassin in a single package?"

"This bee can do anything an ordinary bee can do except pollinate flowers. And I wouldn't doubt for a minute it could perform that function, as well."

"Dr. Roache, what you have told me must remain classified until you have been cleared to release it to the public."

"I assume I will be allowed to author a paper on my discovery," Roache said huffily.

"You will. Assuming you find a safe and secure place to hide. Several people have already died so that the secret you have uncovered does not leak out to the world."

"Who would want to kill me?" Roache asked indignantly.

"The genius who devised that insidious little creature."