Lords of the Earth

Anselmo shuddered at the potential death toll. Even Myron's dull brain registered a glimmer of horror. "So we want to know," Gloria said, "just where you stand on the credit."

"We been paid."

"I'm talking about taking credit for the bombing."

"What?" said both men in unison.

"Credit. We may have twenty thousand dead here. Who gets credit for it?"

"You mean blame?"

"That's unprogressive. I am talking about credit for the act. Publicity."

"If it's okay with you, girlie, you can have all the credit," Anselmo said.

"We'll give you alternate credit. We can say you assisted us. But the main cause is ours. The SLA takes full credit for this one."

"You don't even have to mention us, girlie."

"You sure now? We may be going as high as twenty-five thousand deaths here. You don't want any part of it?"

"No, no. That's okay," Myron said. "In fact, don't mention us at all. Ever. Never. No way."

"That's downright selfless of you," Gloria said. "Nathan, I like these people."

"Then why are they doing it?" Nathan said. He looked at Anselmo. "If you're not getting credit, why steal a bomb? Why all the trouble?"

"We get paid, kid," Anselmo said. "You're doing it for the money?"

"Damned right."

"Why go to all this trouble for money? I mean, where is your daddy?" Nathan asked.

Myron and Anselmo looked at each other again. "Nathan means you could get the money from your fathers," Gloria said.

"You don't know our fathers," said Myron.

"Never mind. You're sure you don't even want an 'assisted by' and then your names?"

"No. We don't want anything," Myron said.

"And be sure," Anselmo said, "that you don't set that thing off until we say so, okay?"

"Sure. Maybe we don't understand all your reasons, but I want you to know I sense solidarity with you. That we are all part of the same struggle," Nathan said.

"Sure. But don't set that thing off until we say so."

Chapter 10

"Must we stay in this rat cage again?" Chiun asked.

"Sorry, Little Father," Remo said. "But until we find out what's going on with these labs, we stay here."

"Easy enough for you to say, fat white thing. There is so much suet on your body that you can be comfortable sleeping on hard floors. But I? I am delicate. My frail body requires real rest."

"You're as delicate as granite," Remo said.

"Don't worry, Chiun," said Dara Worthington.

"You know that I am reduced to spending my life with him and you tell me not to worry?" Chiun said.

"No, it's just that we have rooms here in the laboratory complex. I'll get them to fix one up for you. A real bedroom. One for you too," she said to Remo.

"A real bedroom?" Chiun asked, and Dara nodded. "With a television set?"

"Yes."

"Would it have one of those tape-playing machines?" Chiun asked.

"As a matter of fact, yes."

"Would you by any chance have a complete set of tapes from the show As the Planet Revolves?" Chiun asked.

"Afraid not," she said. "That show hasn't been on the air for ten years."

"Savages," Chiun mumbled in Korean to Remo. "You whites are all savages and philistines."

"She's doing the best she can, Chiun," Remo answered in Korean. "Why don't you just get off everybody's back for a while?"

Chiun raised himself to his full height. "That is a despicable thing to say, even for you," he said in Korean.

"I didn't think it was so bad," Remo said.

"I will not speak to you again until you apologize."

"Hell will freeze over first," Remo said.

"What language is that?" Dara said. "What are you two saying?"

"That was real language," Chiun said. "Unlike the dog barkings that pass for language in this vile land."

"Chiun was just thanking you for the offer of the bedroom," Remo said.

"You're welcome, Dr. Chiun," Dara said with a large smile.

In Korean again, Chiun grumbled: "The woman is too stupid even to insult. Like all whites."

"Are you talking to me?" Remo asked.

Chiun folded his arms and turned his back on Remo.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but being ignored will never hurt me," Remo said.

"Stop teasing that sweet man," Dara said.

She settled them into adjoining rooms in one of the wings of the IHAEO building.

Remo was lying on his back on the small cot, looking up at the ceiling, when there was a faint tap on the door.

He called out and Dara entered.

"I just wanted to see if you were comfortable," she said.

"I'm fine."

She came into the room, shyly at first, but when Remo said nothing, she strode forward and sat on a chair next to his bed.

"I guess I'm still crashing from everything that happened today," she said. "It was glorious and it was awful too."

"I know," Remo said. "I always feel that way about transatlantic flights."

"I don't mean that," she said. She leaned over toward him. "I mean what we did with the Ung beetle. That was glorious and it will live forever. But then, oh, those poor men, when those apes attacked. It was awful."

Remo said nothing and Dara lowered her face toward his so she was staring evenly into his eyes. Her breasts brushed across his chest. She wore no brassiere. "Wasn't it awful?"

"That's the tits," he said. "I mean, the truth. It was awful."

"I never saw such crazed animals," she said.

"Umm" Remo said. He liked the feel of her against him.

"There are no bad animals, you know. Something made them that way."

"Um," Remo said.

"I'm glad you were there to protect me," Dara said.

"Umm," Remo said.

"What could have caused that?" she asked.

"Ummm."

"What kind of an answer is that?"

"I mean, I'll look into it in the morning," Remo said.

"But what do you think?" she persisted.

What Remo thought was that the only way he was going to keep her quiet was to do something physical, so he put his arms around her and pulled her body down onto his. She instantly glued her mouth to his in a long tender kiss.

"I've been thinking of that all day," she said.

"I know," Remo said, reaching over and pulling the chain that turned off the small night lamp.

The FBI no longer guarded the laboratories so the only security was a tired old guard inside a wooden shack at the front gate.

Anselmo and Myron drove up in their white Cadillac and Anselmo lowered the driver's window. "What can I do for you?" the guard said.

Anselmo held up a white box that was on the front seat alongside him.

"Pizza delivery," he said.

"Pretty fancy pizza wagon," the guard said, nodding at the Cadillac limousine.

"Well, I usually got a big pizza slice an top of the car, but I take it off at night. The kids, you know."

"Yeah, kids are bastards, ain't they?" the guard said.

"Sure are."

"Go ahead through," the guard said. "You can park in the lot up there."

"We're looking for Dr. Remo and Dr. Chiun. You know where they are?"

The guard looked at a list on a clipboard. "They came in earlier with everybody else and they didn't sign out. But I don't know what lab they're in."

"But they're in there, right?"

"Have to be," the guard said. "No way out except past me, and no one's gone out tonight."

"Maybe they're sleeping," Anselmo said.

"Maybe," the guard said.

"Maybe I won't disturb them. I'll tell you what. You take the pizza and we'll let them rest."

"Does it have anchovies?" the guard asked.

"No. Just extra cheese and pepperoni," Anselmo said.

"I like anchovies best," the guard said.

"The next time, I bring you one with anchovies," Anselmo promised.

"Won't those two doctors be mad?" the guard asked.

"Not as mad as they're gonna be later," Anselmo said. He shoved the pizza into the guard's hands, put the Cadillac in reverse and slid away.

"Don't forget the anchovies," the guard called.

Two blocks away, Anselmo parked alongside a telephone booth and called the Muswassers' number. "Yes?" Gloria said.

"They're at the lab," Anselmo said.

"Good. We're all ready."

"Just give us time to get out of town," Anselmo said. Gloria Muswasser crawed through the manicured greenery of the IHAEO laboratory complex. She was wearing Earth shoes and a filthy green combat uniform which she had treasured ever since she rolled a Vietnam vet for it in 1972.

Her husband trailed along behind her, emitting little squeaks of pain as bits of rock and twigs scratched his flaccid abdomen.

"Why did I have to come along anyway?" Nathan whined. "You're carrying the whole thing by yourself. You didn't need me."

"No, I didn't," Gloria snapped in agreement. "But I figured if we got caught, I wouldn't have to go to jail alone."

He grabbed her ankle. "Is there a chance of getting caught?"

"None at all, if you keep quiet," she said.

"I don't want to go to jail," Nathan said.

"We won't. I promise you. Before I let the establishment pigs take you, Nathan, I'll gun you down myself."

Nathan gulped.

"It'll make all the papers. You'll be a martyr to the cause. "

"That's . . . that's groovy, Gloria."

"Don't say 'groovy.' It's out-of-date. Say 'awesome.' "

"Okay. It's awesome, Gloria."

"Totally," she agreed. "Also incredible."

"Yeah. That too," Nathan said.

"How about here?" she said. She pointed to a spot of turf near a mulberry bush.

"Totally incredible, Gloria."

"Good. We'll plant the damn thing right here."

"Like a flower," Nathan said. "We'll plant it like a flower. Remember flowers? You used to be real into flowers."

"Screw flowers. Flowers never got us anywhere. Violence is where were coming from now. Nobody ever gave up shit because of flowers."

"Yeah. Up flowers. Violence is where it's at."

"Don't say 'where it's at,' Nathan. It's out-of-date. Say 'bottom line.' "

"Bottom line?"

"Violence is the bottom line," Gloria said, as she turned the time for 120 minutes. "She's going to go, baby."

"Should we watch?"

"Of course not, asshole. We'd be blown up. We'll call the television stations. They'll watch."

"They'll be blown up too," Nathan said.

"Serves them right," she said. "And that's the bottom line."

"Groovy," Nathan said.

Gloria slapped him behind the ear as they crawled away through the dark.

Forty-five minutes later, a television crew showed up at the IHAEO ground and found a large hole cut in the wire safety fence, exactly where the anonymous telephone callers had said it would be.

"This better be good," the head cameraman for WIMP said.

His assistant looked toward the white lab buildings looming in the background behind the fence.

"What are we waiting for?" he asked.

"What else? For Rance Renfrew, hard-hitting television newsman, the man who tells it like it is, your man from WIMP."

Both cameramen chuckled at the imitation of the station's commercial.

"Does he know what it is?" the assistant cameraman said.

"Nope."

"I can't wait to see the look in his eyes."

"Me neither."

They waited a half-hour before a black limousine pulled up in front of them and a young man so brimful of good health that even his hair looked suntanned stepped out of the back. He was wearing a tuxedo and he growled at the two cameramen. "This better be important. I was at a big dinner."

"It is," the head cameraman said, winking toward his assistant. "Some group is planning a big protest here tonight."

"Protest? You got me away from a dinner for a protest? What kind of protest?"

"Something to save animals," the cameraman said. "And protest American genocide."

"Well, that sounds better," Ranee Renfrew said. "We could get something good here." He rehearsed his voice like a musician tuning an instrument. "This is Rance Renfrew on the scene where a group of enraged Americans tonight attacked their government's genocidal policies toward . . ." He looked at the cameramen: "You said animals?"

"Right, animals."

"Their government's genocidal policies toward animals. Could this be the beginning of a movement that will topple down corrupt American governments forever? Not bad. That might work. When's the demonstration supposed to be anyway?"

"About another forty-five minutes or so," the cameraman said.

"Well, we'll be ready. We'll get filmed and say we left a private party to come here to bring our viewers the truth. What are they going to do anyway?"

"Set off an atomic bomb, they said."

The suntan vanished and Rance Renfrew's skin turned pale. "Here?" he said.

"That's what they said."

"Listen, fellas. I think I've got to get some more equipment. You wait here and film anything that happens and I'll be back."

"What kind of equipment do you need?"

"I think I need a muffle on this mike. It's been making my voice too harsh."

"I've got one in the gadget bag," the cameraman said.

"And I need a blue shirt. This white glares too much."

"I've got one of those too."

"And new shoes. I need a different pair of shoes if I'm going to be traipsing around. These are too tight. I'll go get them. You wait for me and film whatever happens."

"Okay. How long will you be?"

"I don't know. My best shoes are at my weekend apartment."

"Where's that?"

"In Miami. But I'll try to get back as soon as I can." Renfrew jumped into the limousine and speeded away. Behind him, the two cameramen broke into guffaws and finally the assistant said, "Hey, shouldn't we be a little worried too? I mean, they said an atomic bomb."

"Come on. These assholes couldn't blow up a firecracker on the Fourth of July," the head cameraman said.

"I guess you're right. Should we warn anybody inside the complex? You know, bomb scare or whatever?"

"No, let them sleep. Nothing's going to happen except maybe some noisy pickets."

"Then what the hell are we here for?" the assistant asked.

"For time and a half after eight hours. What did you think?"

"Got it."

Inside Remo's room, the telephone rang, and without thinking, Dara Worthington reached out a satisfied limp hand toward the receiver.

"Oops," she caught herself. "Maybe I shouldn't."

"You'd better not," Remo said. "It's for me."

"How do you know?"

"There's somebody who always calls me when I'm having a good time. He's got an antenna for it. I think he's afraid I might OD on happiness so he's saving me from a terrible fate." He held the phone to his ear. "Your dime," he said.

"Remo," Smith's lemony tones echoed. "It's-"

"Yeah, yeah, Aunt Mildred," said Remo, using one of the code names with which Smith signed messages.

"This is serious. Are you alone?"

"Enough," Remo said vaguely.

"There's been a serious robbery," Smith said.

"I'm already on a case," Remo said.

"It may be the same case," Smith said. "This was a robbery from a nuclear installation. The missing object is a micronic component fission-pack and a detonator."

"Does anybody who speaks English know what was stolen?" Remo asked.

"That means a small portable nuclear weapon and the means to set it off."

"Well, what can I do about it?"

"The thieves weren't seen so we don't know anything about them," Smith said. "But I've just gotten word that some press organizations received threats tonight aimed against the IHAEO lab."

"Aha. The plot thickens," Remo said. "What does it all boil down to?"

"If it explodes, the bomb could destroy all animal and plant life for twenty square miles," Smith said. "Not to mention the catastrophic effect on the environment."

"Tell me. If it blows, will it get the House of Representatives?" Remo asked.

"Without question."

"I think maybe I should go back to sleep," Remo said.

"This is serious," Smith said.

"Okay, I get the picture." Remo slid past Dara Worthington and slipped into his trousers. "I'll look around. Anything else?"

"I should think that would be enough," Smith said. Remo hung up and patted Dara on her bare hindquarters.

"Sorry, darling. Something's come up."

"Again? So soon? How lovely."

"Work," Remo said. "Just sit tight."

"Your Aunt Mildred sounds very demanding," Dara said. "I heard you call her that."

"She is," Remo said. "She is." He wondered if he should tell her about the bomb threat but decided not to. If he couldn't find the bomb, there wasn't much chance of anyone living anyway.

Remo went into the next room where Chiun lay in the middle of the floor in the thin blanket stripped from the apartment bed.

"Not asleep, Little Father?" Rerno asked.

"Sleep? How does one sleep when one's ears are besieged by the sounds of rutting moose next door?"

"Sorry, Little Father. It was just something that happened."

"Anyway, I am not speaking to you," Chiun said, "so I would appreciate your moving your bleached noisy carcass out of my room."

"In a little while, none of us may be talking to anybody," Remo said. "There may be a bomb on the grounds."

Chiun said nothing. "A nuclear bomb." Chiun was silent.

"I'll do it myself, Chiun," said Remo. "But I don't know much about how to find a bomb. If I don't find it and we all get blown to kingdom come, I just want you to know, well, that it was wonderful knowing you."

Chiun sat up and shook his head. "You are hopelessly white," he said.

"What's my color got to do with it?"

"Everything. Only a white man would search for a bomb by trying to locate a bomb," Chiun said as he rose and brushed past Remo and led the way outdoors.

Remo followed and said, "It sounds reasonable to me, searching for a bomb by looking for a bomb. What would you look for? A four-leaf clover and hope to get lucky?"

"I," the aged Korean said loftily, "would look for tracks. But then I am only a poor abused gentle soul, not nearly so worldly wise as you are."

"What do bomb tracks look like?"

"You don't look for bomb tracks, you imbecile. You look for people tracks. Unless the bomb delivered itself here, people tracks will be left by those who carried it."

"Okay. Let's look for people tracks," Remo said. "And thank you for talking to me."

"You're welcome. Will you promise to wear a kimono?"

"I'd rather not find the bomb," Remo said.

TV station WIMP's chief competitor in the ratings, station WACK, had just arrived on the scene in the person of a camera crew and Lance Larew, anchorman who was, if anything, even tanner than Rance Renfrew, his main rival in the news rating race.

He saw the two cameramen from WIMP but felt elated when he did not see Rance Renfrew around.

"All right, men," he said. "Let's set up and shoot." He took a portable toothbrush from inside his tuxedo pocket and quickly brushed his teeth.

A cameraman said to him, "Hey, if a bomb's gonna go off here, I don't want to be around."

"This is where the action is, boy, and where the action is, you'll find Lance Larew and station WACK."

"Yeah, well the action may be five miles up in the air pretty soon if there's a bomb and it goes off."

"Don't worry. We'll shoot our stuff and get out of here," Larew said. "Let's get in on the grounds."

"I think I see something," Remo said.

Standing on the smooth, damp turf on the lawn, Remo pointed to a series of small impressions following a snaking line. "The grass is flattened here. A combat crawl," he said.

"Amateurs," Chiun said with disdain. He pointed to a small indentation. "Right-handed. Even her elbows leave prints."

"Her?" Remo said.

"Obviously a woman's elbow," Chiun said.

"Obviously," said Remo.

"With a man following behind her. But the woman was carrying the device," Chiun said.

"Obviously," Remo said.

"Hey, look," Lance Larew hissed to his cameramen. "I think there's somebody up ahead. Who are those guys?"

"Maybe they're scientists," the cameraman said. "Maybe. Let's roll the cameras and stay with them in case they blow up."

They were talking in whispers but fifty yards away, Chiun turned to Remo and said, "Who are these noisy fools?"

"I don't know. First the bomb, then I'll take care of them." He looked down at the tracks. "I think you're onto something."

"He's onto something," one of the camera crew shouted. He lumbered forward with his equipment. Lance Larew followed him.

"Perhaps I should dispatch these meddlers into the void," Chiun said, "so we may continue our search in peace."

"Oh, I don't know," Remo said. "Kill a newsman and you never hear the end of it."

"I don't like performing in front of these louts, like a circus elephant."

"Let me find the bomb first," Remo said. He followed the line of the tracks to a flowering bush. He felt the ground with his fingers. The device was there, covered scantily by a coating of earth.

"Hurry. They are encroaching," Chiun whispered as the newsmen came closer. Finally, one of the cameramen pushed forward quickly and flicked his camera in Chiun's direction. Chiun pressed his nose against the lens.

"Hey, cut it out, Methuselah," the cameraman said. "You're getting nose grease all over my lens."

"Nose grease? The Master of Sinanju does not produce nose grease. You have insulted me to the core of my being."

"Now you've done it," Remo called out. "I'm not responsible anymore."

"What is it you're doing there?" Lance Larew shouted. "What are you doing under that bush?" Remo's hands worked fast, first disconnecting the timer, and then dismembering the nuclear device by pounding the metal pieces into powder. He buried the little pile of black and silver granules beneath the mulberry bush.

"I said what are you doing there?" Larew said. He was standing near Remo now.

"Looking for the dreaded Australian night-stalker," Remo said. "This is the only night it blooms. But we missed it. We'll have to wait until next year."

"What about the bomb?" Larew demanded.

"There was no bomb," Remo said. "We've been getting calls like that for weeks. Just cranks."

"You mean I came all this way on a crank call?" Larew said.

"Seems like it," Remo said.

Larew stamped his foot in anger, then called to the two cameramen behind him. "All right, men. We'll do a feature story anyway. Scientists prowl the grounds at midnight looking for a rare flower."

"You don't want to do that," Remo said.

"Don't tell me what I want to do," L,arew said. "First Amendment rights. Freedom of the press. Free speech." He turned to the cameramen. "Shoot some footage on these guys."

The two cameramen aimed at Remo and Chiun, and began rolling the tapes inside the devices. Chiun's narrow hazel eyes peered into one of the cameras.

"How about a little smile?" the cameraman said. "Like this?" Chiun asked, his face contorted in a strained smile.

"That's good, old man. More teeth."

Chiun grabbed the camera and, still smiling, crushed it into a flat slab. Bowing, he handed it back to the cameraman. "Enough teeth?" he asked.

Remo grabbed the other camera from the other cameraman and shredded it into noodle-shaped pieces.

"First Amendment!" screamed Larew.

Remo put some of camera pieces into Larew's mouth. "First Amendment that," he said.

The news crew fled toward the rip in the chain-link fence.

"Thank you, Chiun, for your help," Remo said.

"Will you ... ?"

"I still won't wear a kimono," Remo said.

Gloria Muswasser's ear was getting tired. She cradled the telephone between her head and her shoulder while on a piece of blue paper she crossed out another set of television call letters.

She dialed another number.

"WZRO newsroom," a male voice said.

"I am the spokesman for the Species Liberation Alliance," Gloria said in her most menacing terrorist voice.

"So?"

"I am calling to claim credit for the near-holocaust at the IHAEO labs tonight."

"What holocaust? What near-holocaust? The biggest news tonight is that the President's sleeping soundly with no bad dreams."

"It was nearly a holocaust," Gloria insisted.

"Nearly doesn't count."

"What are you talking about? We almost blew the Eastern Seaboard back to the Stone Age."

"Almost doesn't count either," the bored voice on the telephone said.

"Now you listen, you military industrial pig sympathizer," Gloria shouted. "We are the SLA and we mean to claim credit for an atomic blast that would have made Hiroshima look like a fart in a bottle. The holocaustal potential for this is staggering."

"I don't care if you're the SLA, the A.F. of L. of the S-H-I-T-S," the newsman said. "Nothing happened tonight, so there's no news."

"Jesus," Gloria sighed. "Nothing happened. Always you want action. You're sensationalist scandalmongers."

"That's about it," the newsman said.

"Disgusting."

"If you say so," he agreed.

"Doesn't intent count for anything?"

"Lady," the newsman said tiredly. "If malicious intent were the basis for a story, the evening news would be forty hours long."

"But this was a freaking atomic bomb, you asshole," Gloria screamed.

"And this is a dial tone," the newsman said as he hung up on her.

Gloria lit a cigarette from the butt of Nathan's. "We've got to come up with a new plan," she said.

"They didn't buy it?"

"Pigs. The guy said malicious intent wasn't enough."

"It was enough in Vietnam," Nathan said in his most self-righteous tone.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Gloria asked.

"I don't know," Nathan said mildly. "Talking about Vietnam is usually safe."

"Vietnam isn't in anymore," Gloria said, "so stop jerking around. This is important. Perriweather's going to hit the ceiling when he finds out the bomb didn't go off. He must have spent a fortune on this."

"A fortune," Nathan said. Agreeing with Gloria was almost always safe.

"Maybe we can come up with something just as good. Something sensational that the media would be interested in," Gloria said.

"WIMP wasn't interested?" Nathan asked.

"They said they sent a crew but everybody went home."

"And WACK?" Nathan asked.

"They sent a crew too and got assaulted by some people watching flowers bloom. So we've got to come up with something good."

"Like what?"

"Think," Gloria demanded.

Nathan pressed his eyebrows together. "How's this?"

"That's real good," she said.

"I'm thinking. How about a protest?"

"Protests are out," she said. "It's got to be big."

"We used to liberate banks," Nathan said.

"No good. Banks are out too."

"What's in?"

"Schools and supermarkets," Gloria said. "Stuff like that. Murdering children is always good."

"How about a hospital," Nathan said. "Or is that too gross?"

"A hospital?" Gloria said sharply.

"Yeah. Really, I didn't mean it the way it sounded."

"That's brilliant. A hospital. A children's ward. And we'll do it on those days when they bring pets to play with kids. We'll show them to let the little bastards mistreat animals."

"Real good," Nathan said. "Right on."

"Don't say that. 'Right on' is out."

"Sorry, Gloria. I meant your idea is really the bottom line."

"It's the max," she said.

"Real max, Gloria," said Nathan.

"Good. Now we can call Perriweather and tell him what we're planning," Gloria said. "I was never too hot on that atomic-bomb idea anyway."

"Too destructive?" Nathan said.

"Naaah, but who'd be around to notice the blood?" Gloria asked.

Chapter 11

Dr. Dexter Morley was sitting on a high stool, his pudgy cheeks flushed, his fat little fingers clasped together in his lap, when Perriweather entered the lab. The little scientist's lips curved into a prideful quick grin when he saw his employer.

"Well?" Perriweather asked impatiently.

"The experiment is complete," Morley said. His voice quivered with excitement and accomplishment.

"Where is it?" Perriweather asked, brushing past the scientist and heading for the lab tables.

"There are two of them," Morley said, trying frantically and futilely to keep Perriweather's hands off the sterile surfaces in the lab. "If you'll just wait a moment . . ."

"I've waited enough moments," Perriweather snapped. "Where?"

Dr. Morley stiffened at the rebuke but went to get a small cheesecloth-covered box on a shelf. As his hands touched it, they trembled. "Here," he said, his voice hushed and filled with awe as he removed the cloth.

Beneath it was a Plexiglas cube. Inside the cube was a piece of rotting meat. Sitting on top of the meat, feeding and lazily twitching, were two red-winged flies.

"A breeding pair?" Perriweather asked. "You got a breeding pair?"

"Yes, Mr. Perriweather."

Involuntarily, Perriweather gasped at the sight of the flies. He lifted the plastic cube with hands so gentle that the flies never moved from the piece of meat. He watched them from every angle, turning the cube this way and that, observing them from below and above and eye-to-eye, marveling at the stained-glass redness of their wings.

"Their wings are exactly the color of fresh human blood," he whispered.

As he watched, the two flies rose from the meat and briefly coupled in the air before settling back down. Almost to himself, Perriweather said, "If I could only find a woman who could do that."

For some reason, Dr. Dexter Morley felt vaguely embarrassed, like a Peeping Tom caught in the act. He cleared his throat and said, "Actually, the two flies are exactly like ordinary houseflies, except for the color of the wings. Musca domestica of the order Diptera."

"They're not exactly like houseflies," said Perriweather, casting a sharp glance at the scientist. "You didn't change that, did you?"

"No. No, I didn't."

"Then it's the ultimate life form," Perriweather said slowly, rotating the plastic cube as if it were a flawless blue-white diamond that he had just found in his backyard.

"Well, I wouldn't go that far," Dr. Morley said, fluttering his eyelids and attempting a weak smile.

"What would you know?" Perriweather hissed.

"Uh. Yes, sir. What I was about to say was that in most respects the species is an ordinary housefly. Shape and structure. Its eating habits are the same, which unfortunately makes it a disease bearer, although I believe that in time we could eliminate-"

"Why would you want to eliminate that?" Perriweather said.

"What? Its disease-bearing properties?" Perriweather nodded.

"Why . . ." The scientist shook his head. "Perhaps we are not communicating, Mr. Ferriweather. Flies do bear disease."

"Of course. If they didn't, there would be even more humans on earth today than we've already got."

"I ... er, I guess I see your point," Morley said. "I think. But still, Musca morleyalis is still a disease bearer and therefore dangerous."

"Musca morteyalis?" Perriweather asked. His face was expressionless.

Morley flushed. "Well, generally, discoveries such as these are attributed to the scientist who . . ."

Perriweather's face still showed no expression as he said, "Try Musca Perriweatheralis." Finally his face broke into a small smile.

The scientist cleared his throat. "Very well," he said softly.

"Why are their wings red?" Perriweather asked.

"Ah." The scientist flushed. He was more comfortable talking about biology than disputing names with his terrifying employer. "The amino acids developed in this species are, as I said, radically different from the ordinary housefly's. Not only in type, but in location. Apparently, that produced the genetic mutation that gave us the red wings. Naturally, when the experiments continue and we destroy these particular organisms, then we'll start to relocate the-"

"Destroy? Destroy what?" Perriweather's eyes blazed.

"Since we have all the paperwork, it really isn't necessary to keep the actual organisms, particularly since their respiratory systems are developed to a point that makes them incompatible with other forms of life."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that these flies are immune to DDT, other pesticides and all poisons," Morley said.

"That was the point, wasn't it?"

"That was exactly the point," Perriweather said.

His eyes sparkled. "All pesticides?"

"All pesticides currently known. Allow me." He lifted the plastic cube from Perriweather's hands and placed it on the gleaming white lab table. Wearing rubber gloves, he inserted the gauze flycatcher into the box and withdrew one of the flies. Next he opened a small container from which a soft hiss issued. "Pure DDT," Morley said as he lowered the flycatcher into the container and closed the top.

"What's going to happen?" Perriweather asked anxiously.

"Absolutely nothing," Morley said. "There's enough pure pesticide in that-"

"Please don't refer to them as pesticides," Perriweather said.

"Sorry, there's enough DDT in there to kill a country full of flies. But notice the condition of Musca perriweatheralis." He pulled out the gauze flycatcher and covered the top of the box. Inside the gauze, the red-winged fly buzzed angrily. When he placed it back into the plastic cube, it darted straight for the piece of meat.

"He's still alive," Perriweather said.

"And unharmed," Morley added. "It can survive in an atmosphere of pure methane," the scientist said proudly. "Or cyanide. Or any poison you can think of."

"Then it's invincible."

"That's why it has to be destroyed," Morley said. "I'm sure you wouldn't want to risk having a creature like this loose in our atmosphere," he said. "As it is, the precautions I've taken with it have been enormous. But the danger grows as the pair breeds. If even one such fly gets out of this lab alive, it could significantly jeopardize the ecological balance of the planet."

"A fly that can't be poisoned," Perriweather said proudly.

"As you know, Mr. Perriweather, it is much more than that. There are the other things it does. Its ability to bite, for instance, unlike Musca domestica. And the result of its bites. You know, Mr. Perriweather, when I first came here to work, you promised that one day you would tell me how you had developed those initial mutations."

"Let's see the demonstration again," Perriweather said. Morley noticed that his employer was breathing hard.

"Must we?"

"We must," Perriweather said. His voice was a soft uninflected drone, almost like a buzz, but it chilled Morley more than shouting would have.

"Very well."

The scientist went to a far corner of the lab to a terrarium filled with salamanders. He took one out and brought it back to the plastic cube containing the flies.

"You be careful. I don't want that lizard accidentally eating one of those flies."

"It won't," Morley said. He covered the salamander's head and held it inside the container with the flies. One of the flies lighted on the salamander's tail for a second, then hopped back onto the lump of rancid meat.

Morley tossed the salamander into another clear plastic container that already held a large wood frog. The frog was a dozen times larger than the lizard; its body weight must have been one hundred times as great. The frog looked at the salamander and flicked out a lazy tongue.

Perriweather moved up next to the plastic cube; his face touched it as he watched to see what would happen next.

The frog flicked out its tongue again and almost instantly its tongue had been severed and was lying on the bottom of the container, still twitching reflexively. The frog's eyes bulged in terror as the salamander attacked it, biting it fiercely, and ripped off large chunks of skin from its body. Then the lizard grabbed and ripped the limbs from the frog. The frog's eyes burst into blobs of jelly. Its clear-colored blood sprayed against the plastic sides of the container. It made a feeble sound; then its resonating cavities were filled with its own bodily fluids. The frog twitched, and then lay immobile on the floor of the cage, as the tiny salamander crawled atop it, still attacking.

Another two more minutes, the interior of the plastic container was invisible from the outside. The frog's entrails and fluids had covered the sides. Silently Dr. Morley lifted the top of the box and inserted a long hypodermic needle and withdrew it with the dead salamander impaled on the tip.

"Air injected right into the heart," he said, tossing the reptile into a plastic bag. "Only way I know to kill it."

He looked at Perriweather. "Now you see why these two must be destroyed?"

Perriweather looked at the flies for a long time before looking back to the scientist.

"I'll take care of it," Perriweather said. "For the time being, guard them with your life."

The room upstairs was dark, as it always was, and hot, and smelled of sweetness and rot. VValdron Perriweather III entered quietly, as he always did, carefully replacing the key in his jacket pocket after unlocking the door. The dust in the room lay in sheets across the ancient velvet furniture with delicate crocheted doilies.

Perriweather walked softly across the dusty threadbare rug to a high mantel covered with antique silk. On top of the silk was only one object, a tiny jeweled case thickly crusted with gold and precious stones.

Lovingly he picked up the case and held it for several minutes in the palm of his hand. He stared at it, not speaking, not moving, except for the gentle strokes of his fingers upon its jeweled surface.

Finally, taking a deep breath, he opened the case. Inside lay the tiny corpse of a fly.

Perriweather's eyes softened with a film of tears. With a trembling finger, he touched the hairy, still little body.

"Hello, Mother."

Chapter 12

Perriweather was back at the desk in his study when the telephone rang.

"Mr. Perriweather," Gloria Muswasser said. "We're sorry but the bomb didn't go off."

When she got off the telephone, she would tell Nathan that Perriweather didn't seem to mind at all. He was cordial. More than cordial.

"It wasn't our fault either," Gloria said. "The fuckup was due to the paranoid insensitivity of the unenlightened news media and-"

"No matter, Mrs. Muswasser," Perriweather said. "I have contingency plans."

"So do we," Gloria said, thinking of the children's ward at the hospital. "Nathan and I just came up with something so fantastic, so big, you're going to really love it."

"I'm sure I will," Perriweather said. "Why don't you come out to the house and tell me about it?"

"Really? Really? You're not mad?"

"Do I seem angry?" Perriweather said.

"Say, you're really a good sport," Gloria said. "We'll start right up there."

"I'll be expecting you."

"Mr. Perriweather, you won't be sorry. The new plan will get rid of all your problems."

"Yes, it will," Perriweather said.

"You haven't even heard it yet."

"I'm sure it will. You and Nathan, I know, will get rid of all my problems," Perriweather said as he hung up.

Gloria Muswasser said to Nathan, "He's a little on the weird side, but he's okay. He wants us to come up to Massachusetts and tell him about the new plan. He wants us to solve all his problems."

"Bottom line. Really bottom line," Nathan said with authority.

Chapter 13

The Muswassers arrived six hours late. First, they had gotten lost and wound up in Pennsylvania instead of Massachusetts. Then they had seen a theater playing their all-time favorite movie, The China Syndrome, so they stopped to see it for the twenty-seventh time.

When Perriweather met them at the door of his home, they offered him a flurry of secret handshakes. He politely refused them all so they shook each other's hands.

Perriweather escorted them into a sparsely furnished room in a far wing of the mansion.

"Wait till you hear our idea, Wally boy," said Gloria expansively.

"I'm sure it will be wonderful."

"We're sorry about the TNT and the atomic bomb. They just didn't work and we feel bad about it," Nathan said.

"You mustn't feel bad. After all, look at all the chimpanzees you helped destroy by getting that package delivered to Uwenda," Perriweather said sarcastically.

"Well, not as good as delegates directly," Gloria said. "But at least the chimps killed some of the delegates. That was good."

"It certainly was," Perriweather said agreeably. "So good that I thought you ought to be rewarded."

"That's real nice, Wally," Gloria said.

"Would you two care for a glass of sherry?" Perriweather asked.

"Got any weed?" Nathan said before his wife elbowed him in the ribs.

"Sherry'd be fine," Gloria said.

Perriweather nodded. "Good. I'll be right back. Wait here for me and then I'll show you how you're going to fit into our great new plan of attack." He closed the door to the room behind him as he went out.

Gloria and Nathan roamed around the room with its two metal chairs and small plastic Parsons table. "Look at this," Nathan said. He picked up a framed object from the table and handed it to Gloria. It was a collection of little human-shaped dolls speared through their torsos with pins, their arms and legs splayed wide like the appendages of insects in a display cage. "He's buggy," Nathan whispered. "Don't tell me."

"He's into bugs," Gloria said.

"I thought the Species Liberation Alliance meant animals," Nathan said. "Like puppies and things. Harp seals. Endangered species. Who the hell ever endangered a bug species?"

"That's because you're narrow-minded," Gloria said. "Bugs are animals. They sure aren't vegetable or mineral. And since Perriweather's been putting up all the money for the SLA, I guess he ought to have a say in what we try to liberate."

"Yeah, but bugs aren't cute," Nathan said as he put the display case back on the table. "Ever try to snuggle up to a mosquito?"

"That's your bourgeois unliberated upbringing," Gloria said. "You have to learn to accept bugs as your equals."

The library door opened a crack and a tiny buzzing creature flew in. The door closed sharply behind it, and Gloria heard a sound like two heavy bolts sliding into place inside the door.

"What's that?" Nathan said.

"It's a fly," Gloria said. "It's got red wings."

"Maybe it's a pet. Maybe it wants to be friends." The fly was circling around Nathan's head. "Go ahead, Nathan. Hold out your hand to it."

"It wants to crap on my hand," Nathan said.

"Nathan," Gloria said menacingly.

"Ah, I never met a fly that wanted to shake hands before," Nathan said.

"That was in the old days. Our whole way of thinking about our insect friends has to change," Gloria said.

"All right, all right," Nathan said.

"Go ahead. Give the fly your hand."

"What if he bites it?"

"Stupid. Little flies don't bite."

"Some of them do," Nathan said.

"What of it? Maybe he needs the nourishment. You wouldn't want it to starve, would you? For lack of a little blood when you've got so much of it?"

"I guess not," Nathan said miserably and held out his arm.

"That's better," Gloria said. "Come on, little fly. We'll call him Red. Come on, Red. Come say hello to Gloria and Daddy Nathan."

The fly landed in the crook of Nathan's elbow. From outside the door to the room, Waldron Perriweather III heard a shriek, then a growl. And then another shriek as Gloria too was bitten.

He slid shut yet a third steel bolt in the door, patted the door, and a thin smile creased his face.

* * *

Dr. Dexter Morley was frantic when he burst into Perriweather's study.

"They're gone. Both of them. I just went to the bathroom for a moment and when I came back they were gone."

"I have the flies," Perriweather said.

"Oh. Thank heavens. I was so worried. Where are they?"

"I told you I'd take care of them." Perriweather's eyes were like ice.

"Yes, sir," Morley said. "But you've got to be really careful with them. The're very dangerous."

Although the ice-blue eyes were still frozen, Perriweather's lips formed a tight smile. "You've achieved quite a milestone, Doctor," he said.

Morley fidgeted. Praise seemed not to belong on Perriweather's lips. He nodded because he did not know what else to do.

"You asked me, Doctor, how I had produced the other changes in that fly. The ability to bite and its effect on creatures that it did bite."

"Yes. I am really interested in that."

"The truth is, Doctor . . ." Perriweather rose to his feet. "I've taken the liberty of inviting a few friends over to help us celebrate. I didn't think you'd mind."

"Of course not."

"They're waiting for us. Why don't we walk over there?" Perriweather said. He clapped a big hand on Dr. Morley's shoulder and steered the scientist toward the door. As they walked, he continued talking.

"Actually, I had another scientist working earlier for me," Perriweather said. "Those two breakthroughs were his. But he could never come up with the big breakthrough. That honor was reserved for you."

"Thank you. That's very kind. Who was the other scientist?" Morley asked.

Perriweather paused with Morley outside a door. Quietly he began to slide back the bolts in the door. "Yes, it was a great achievement," Perriweather said. "You've made the new species unkillable and that should put your name in the honor rolls of science for all time. You made only one little mistake."

"Oh, what was that?"

"You said the flies should be ready to breed in a few weeks?"

"Yes."

"They already have and we've got pretty little maggots already growing on that piece of meat."

"Oh my God. They've got to be destroyed. If one gets out ... they've got to be destroyed."

"Wrong again, Dr. Morley. You've got to be destroyed."

He pulled the door open, pushed the scientist inside, and slammed the door shut, pushing the bolts back in place.

There were growls, no longer recognizable as the voices of Gloria and Nathan Muswasser. Then there was a scream, a thump and the sickening sound of flesh being torn from bone.

Perriweather knew the sound. He pressed his ear to the door and reveled in it. As a child, he had once torn the flesh from a cat in the gardener's toolshed. He had found some carpenter's tools, a vise and a clamp, and had used them to dismember the animal. The cat had sounded like that too. And Perriweather had felt the same satisfaction then.

He'd caught the cat playing with a spiderweb. The cat had trapped the spider and had been playing with it as if it were some kind of toy. He had taught the cat a lesson. And then, when the gardener had caught him with the bloody cat in his hands, he had taught the gardener a lesson too.

The gardener had tried to untangle the dead cat from the clamps and while he was working and muttering that young Waldron was going to learn the difference between right and wrong, by God, the boy had calmly and silently moved a stool behind the old man, climbed on it, lifted a brick over his head and smashed it into the spotted, white-haired skull. Then he had set fire to the shed and that was the end of the gardener. Along with all his insecticides and poisons.

It was in those earlier memories that the SLA had taken form. Of course, Waldron Perriweather couldn't care less about most animals. They were coarse, hygiene-obsessed things that cared as little for insects as human beings did. But when he had first tried recruiting people for the Insect Liberation Front, no one had seemed particularly interested. Human beings were self-centered creatures who wanted to believe that they were the superior species of earth. Most of them didn't even know that they were outnumbered by insects more than a million to one. As far as most ignorant humans were concerned, insects were objects to be swatted without a thought. Little boys tore the wings off flies for sport. Housewives regularly sprayed their kitchens with fly poisons. They let out plastic containers that emitted toxic fumes just to avoid sharing their space with flies. The injustice of it was too great to be borne.

But he couldn't interest anyone in the Insect Liberation Front, so quietly, using a lot of other people as the up-front leaders, he had begun the Species Liberation Alliance. He put up the money and directed it. In the early days, the public members took the credit. Now, as the group had become more violent in its methods, the public members took the blame. All Waldron Perriweather got was the satisfaction of a job well done.

But now the battle was almost over. He had his invincible weapon. One of them was alive in the Plexiglas cube in his office, and another twelve were little maggots, gorging themselves on rancid beef. In another day or two, they would be red-winged beauties too. Ready to take their revenge on the earth.

Upstairs, in the dusty quiet room housing the jeweled miniature casket, Perriweather spoke softly to the withered black insect.

"It has begun, Mother," he said. "I told you that your death would be avenged. The punishment is coming for all those who could so casually kill our kind as if we were of no importance. They will see our importance, Mother. The new red-winged fly will be our avenging angel."

He thought for a moment. "There are two obstacles yet to deal with, Mother. The two new scientists at the IHAEO laboratory. From what I hear, they claim to be even further advanced than Dr. Ravits was. And they were responsible for the mass murder in Uwenda, wiping out the Ung beetle."

A tear rolled down his cheek as he thought of the horrible numbers of insects killed. "They're monsters, Mother. But don't worry. Their time is coming. This Dr. Remo and this Dr. Chiun will see no more sunrises."

Chapter 14

Barry Schweid had finally simplified the steps necessary to get the information from the small attache-case computer. Smith still did not understand how Schweid was able to use something he called cosmic energy for storage, but that didn't matter. It was enough that any bit of information that went into CURE's main computers at Folcroft and on St. Martin Island would instantly be transferred to the small hand-held attache case. And now Smith no longer needed Schweid to access that information: he could get it himself.

Schweid had also worked out the erasure mechanisms for the main computer: He had already installed it on the St. Martin equipment and when Smith went back to Folcroft, he would do the same with the mainframe computers there. CURE's information would be safe from invasion. If anyone should ever enter the computer line, it would instantaneously erase itself.

It was absolute safety, absolutely foolproof, and Smith felt good.

Until he felt the click in the attache case which meant that there was a telephone call for him.

When he opened the case, he saw a small green light lit. That meant the call was coming from his office in Rye, New York, and he was surprised.

The green light had never been lit before. Mrs., Mikulka, his secretary, was far too efficient to require any help from him during the time he spent away from the office.

Actually, it was Mrs. Mikulka who ran the day-to-day operations of the sanitarium, and her salary, if not her title, reflected it. She knew nothing about CURE and if her superior often seemed inordinately engrossed in some business that needed no one but himself to run it, she kept that opinion to herself. Actually, she believed that Smith had himself some kind of time-consuming hobby, like correspondence chess, and not a business that he organized and managed, because she felt that Harold Smith was one of those men who could not organize a button into a buttonhole unaided.

"Yes, Mrs. Mikulka," he said into the small portable telephone in the case.

It couldn't be anything bad, Smith thought. His security problems with the computers were solved; Remo had obviously found and disarmed the atomic weapon because there had been no explosion, and he had faith that Remo and Chiun would soon put an end to whoever was behind the attacks on the IHAEO labs. And Dr. Ravits' great scientific breakthrough was safe and now belonged to the world's scientific community. The day might come when the world would be free of destructive insects, and if that happened, CURE could take some of the quiet credit. Nothing bad could happen to Smith now.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Dr. Smith," Mrs. Mikulka said hesitantly. There was a catch in her voice. Her words trailed off into silence.

"Hello. Mrs. Mikulka, are you there?"

"Yes, sir," the woman said. "I don't know quite how to tell you this . . ."

"Go ahead, please," Smith said, but tried not to be snappish with the woman. "I'm expecting another call and I'd like to keep this conversation brief." The truth was, Smith was expecting no other call. He didn't like to tie up any telephone line. The more words, the more chance of someone overhearing them.

"Of course, sir," she said. "The offices have been broken into."

"The computers downstairs?" Smith said. "No, they weren't touched. It was my desk."

"What in the desk?" Smith asked mildly, feeling a wave of relief flood his body. There was nothing of importance to CURE in her desk.

"Your telephone book, sir."

Telephone book? All the telephone numbers in the world had been programmed into the Folcroft computers years before.

"The old book," she continued. "The address book you gave me. It was before you built your computers. You had me type all your numbers into a directory. I think it was in 1968."

He remembered. It was taking a risk back then, having eyes other than his own see the material he was assembling to put into the computers. For that reason, he had never hired a permanent secretary, using instead an endless series of temporary typists to handle the overwhelming paperwork.

The typists were dull things as a rule, slow and sometimes too inquisitive about reports that obviously had nothing to do with the administration of a nursing home for the elderly. Only Mrs. Mikulka, on the days she worked for Smith, met his requirements. She was fast, well-organized and totally accurate, and most important, asked no questions about the work.

Eventually, after the computers were installed, Smith took her on permanently, knowing that the sanitarium business at Folcroft would run smoothly and unobtrusively under her keen and discreet eye. But the telephone book was different. It contained a list of numbers, all coded but decipherable, of every contact CURE had used up until 1988. It contained the name of the man who had first recruited Remo, all the upper-echelon Pentagon personnel, leaders of foreign countries, large-scale crime bosses and the like. The information the book contained was of secondary importance. Most of the cast of characters had changed in the intervening years. The danger of the book lay in the fact of its very existence and that it could lead an intelligent observer to wonder who would compile such a list of numbers and possibly bring him to the realization that America had a supersecret agency working outside the law.

It meant exposure for CURE and once it was exposed, CURE was finished.

"You're sure the book is missing?" Smith asked. "Maybe you destroyed it years ago?"

"I'm sure, sir. I didn't trust the computers at the time. I thought they might do something wrong and erase everything, so when I saw the old telephone book on your desk, I wanted to please you so I picked it up and put it in my desk drawer and it was in the back of the drawer for seventeen years."

"How do you know it was stolen?" Smith asked.

"I . . ." She faltered. "I think I know who took it, Dr. Smith."

"Yes?"

"My son."

Smith struggled to keep his voice calm. "What makes you say that?"

"It was my fault, Dr. Smith," she sobbed. "He's a good boy, really. It's just that he always gets into trouble."

"Please tell me only the facts," Smith said calmly. "It's important. What is your son's name?"

"Keenan, after my husband. But it was my fault. I told him."

"Told him what?"

Mrs. Mikulka sounded nearly hysterical over the telephone. "Keenan came home the other night. It's been so long since we've seen him. He was traveling so much, and then there was some business with a robbery and he spent some time in prison. Not a maximum-security prison, mind . . .

Smith began to form a mental picture of the man who was his secretary's offspring: a lonely, unlikable young felon who always looked for the easy way out. A mugger, thief, a check forger, a petty criminal.

Smith wanted to chastise himself for hiring Mrs. Mikulka without checking into the backgrounds of all her family members. Her own background was impeccable; nothing about her had ever been out of place. "Did you talk to him about me?" Smith asked.

"It was just talk, Dr. Smith," she pleaded. "Keenan was home and for once he didn't just ask for money. I made him his favorite dinner and afterward we sat and talked, just Keenan and me, like the old days before he left home. It was just talk."

"Just talk about what?" he asked. He heard her weeping.

"I'm so ashamed. I've never said a word about you before . . .

"Please go on, Mrs. Milkulka," Smith said.

"I just mentioned casually that you seemed so awfully busy for a man without much to do. I mean ..."

"I understand. What else?"

"Just that you were always at Folcroft from sunrise until midnight and the only people you ever saw were the young man with the thick wrists and the old Chinese man. Keenan said it sounded like you were covering something up, and I ... well, I mentioned the old phone book, I don't know why it popped in my head, and the names in it that didn't make any sense like ELYODDE. I remember that was one of them. And Keenan asked me if I still had the book and at first I said I didn't because it was so long ago but then I remembered that it was probably still in my desk."

"I see," said Smith. He felt the color drain from his face.

"Keenan asked me to get the book for him," Mrs. Mikulka said.

"Did you?"

"Of course not," she said indignantly. "I told him I was going to burn it in the morning, now that I'd remembered about it. Especially since you never seemed to need it, not once in all those seventeen years. I don't know what you spend your time on, Dr. Smith, but I know it's nobody's business but yours. Not mine and not Keenan's."

"Yes," Smith said vaguely.

"But, then this morning when I woke up, Keenan was gone with all his things. He wasn't supposed to leave until next week. That's what his ticket said. And then when I got to the office, there was this mess . . ."

"Wait a minute, Mrs. Mikulka. His ticket to where?"

"Puerto Rico. You see, Keenan just came into some money. I didn't ask him where he got it."

"San Juan? Is that where he's going? Do you know exactly where he's staying?"

The line was silent for a long moment. Then the woman said, "He said he was staying in another city. With a funny name. He said he had a friend there, someone he'd spent time in prison with. Crystal Ball, that's it."

"Cristobal? San Cristobal?"

"Yes, I think so."

"What's the name of the friend?"

"That I'm sure of," she said. "Salmon."

"Er . . .salmon?"

"Like the fish. Except Keenan pronounced it salmoan. " Mrs. Mikulka paused and then blurted out a question: "Would you like me to leave immediately, Dr. Smith? Or should I finish off the work I've got first?"

Smith's mind was already hundreds of miles away, already planning an action in the mountain village of San Cristobal in central Puerto Rico.

"Dr. Smith?" she said.

"I beg your pardon," he said.

"My resignation. I know it's necessary and if I've been party to some kind of a crime, I'm willing to take the consequences for that," she said unemotionally. "I just wanted you know I didn't do it on purpose."

"Don't resign," Smith said. "Don't even think of that now. We will discuss all that some other time, Mrs. Mikulka."

He hung up and looked at Barry Schweid, who was sitting across the room, trying to get a suntan through a tightly closed window.

"Need any help, Harold?" Schweid said.

"No. I want to use this computer to trace an airline ticket."

"Go ahead. I showed you how."

Within a few seconds, Smith had confirmed that one Keenan Mikulka had booked passage on a commercial airline to San Juan. The ticket had been used. Smith closed the attache case and stood up.

"Barry, I'm going to have to go away for a day or so."

"I'm going to be by myself here?"

"Yes. This is a nice apartment and there's food in the refrigerator."

"What should I do if the telephone rings?" Schweid asked.

"Answer it, Barry," said Smith.

"If it's for you, Harold?"

"Take a message, Barry." Smith's face was grim. "I have to go now, Barry."

"Take me with you," Barry said.

Smith shook his head. "I can't. Not this time."

He walked out the door. Behind him, Barry Schweid whimpered, "Please," and clutched his blue blanket.

Chapter 15

Smith drove carefully over the rutted dirt road leading to San Cristobal, his left hand resting lightly on an attache case that was an exact duplicate of the one which contained CURE's computers.

Smith had locked the computer case in one of the luggage lockers at San Juan Airport. Both cases had passed through security without a glance. Smith had produced a card bearing a false name and that false name had been greeted with the deference due a visiting king, even though Smith had flown in from St. Martin, which was technically a foreign country. None of the officials recognized the face of the middle-aged man in the three-piece suit but their orders were to extend him every courtesy.

Even a car was waiting, a gleaming gray Mercedes, but Smith had exchanged it for a nondescript Ford. He turned down the offer of a driver from airport officials. Smith had lived a lifetime of secrecy and did not like ostentation. He was intentionally forgettable-looking, and his manner was bland and innocuous. It was the way men like Smith were trained to look and to live.

That very look of harmlessness was what often kept Smith's sort alive. It had kept him alive throughout the Second World War and during Korea with the CIA and through the beginning of CURE.

Now that Remo was the agency's enforcement arm, Smith no longer had to stay in the kind of physical condition his profession had once required, but the secretive cast of mind remained. It was an ingrained part of him, as necessary as his steel-rimmed eyeglasses.

He entered San Cristobal through a back road and parked on a dusty side street. The street was hot in the blistering afternoon and nearly lifeless. A fat housewife shuffled a brood of children into a store where flies peered out through dirty glass. A lame duncolored dog limped into an alleyway looking for a scrap of garbage.

The only sounds of life came from a bar a hundred feet from where Smith had parked. There, the voices made the kind of hollow noises of men with too much time and too little money. Smith walked down the block, into the bar, and stood at the dirty metal counter.

"Si, senor?" the bartender asked.

"Cerveza, por favor," said Smith. When the beer came, Smith asked in broken Spanish if the bartender knew a man named Salmon.

The man furrowed his brow in concentration and Smith repeated, "Sal-moan," accenting the second syllable.

To his surprise, the bartender threw the dirty bar rag in front of Smith and turned his back on him. The other men in the bar were silent for a moment, then burst into raucous laughter.

"Senor," a man with a creased red face said, as he walked up to Smith. "It is clear you do not understand. Salmon is a ... how do you call it, nickname. It means a fool, or a stupid lazy fellow. You see?" He raised his eyebrows inquiringly, then translated what he had just said for the other six men in the tavern. "Es Rafael, si," one of them shouted with a laugh. The bartender shook his fist at him.

"You have hurt Rafael's feelings," the red-faced man told Smith.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Smith said mildly. He began to apologize as best he could to the barman, but as he began to speak, a barrel-chested man who had been sitting at at table at the side of the room stood up. His eyes met Smith's and then he walked curtly toward the open entrance out into the street.

Smith took a sip of his beer, figured that his beer was ninety cents, debated about waiting for his change, then left a full dollar on the bar. The ten-cent tip might assuage the bartender's hurt feelings, he thought.

The street outside was empty. Smith thought for a moment that the man's exit had meant nothing, but he dismissed the thought. Decades of spy work had made him aware of the meanings behind even simple gestures, and he had to trust his instincts. Without them, he had nothing else.

He saw it then, suspended on an ironwork pole near the top of a run-down three-story building down the block. A sign. There were no words on it, only the drawing of a fish. A salmon?

He saw an open door at ground level and walked into a room devoid of furniture but cluttered with boxes and crates. A few bits of paper were strewn on the floor. In the corners stood rows of empty beer bottles. A shabby middle-aged woman with a face frozen into a permanent scowl waddled toward him down a corridor from the back of the apartment.

"Si?" she demanded with the air of one whose privacy had been violated.

"I'm looking for a man," he tried to explain in Spanish. "An American-"

"No men," she snapped in passable English. "Women only. You want?"

"No. I don't want a woman."

"Then go."

"I am looking for a man."

"Ten dollars."

"I..."

"Ten dollars," the woman repeated.

Smith handed her a bill reluctantly, then followed the woman to a filthy kitchen in the back of the store. "I just want to talk," Smith said.

"Follow me," the woman said. She led Smith up a rickety flight of stairs to the top landing. In the dim, roach-swarming corridor, she knocked brusquely on a door, then pushed it open. "You talk in here," she said, pushed Smith inside, and closed the door behind him.

Smith's eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness of the room. When they did, they rested on a solitary figure, a young woman with a tumble of black curls falling over her shoulders. She was sitting cross-legged on a rumpled corner of the bed, wearing shorts and a tight cotton shirt whose three buttons barely contained the ample flesh of her bosom.

Smith cleared his throat. "That's not necessary, Miss," he said, annoyed that his voice was barely audible. "Do you speak English? Habla usted ingles?"

The girl untangled her long legs from beneath her and rose. Her shorts stretched across her hips tantalizingly. She walked toward him, wordlessly, the hint of a smile playing on her lips.

Smith didn't know what gave her away. A glance of her eyes, perhaps, or a tension in her body as she snaked toward him. He did not know the reason but he was ready when he heard the first sound of the ambush.

Smith was no longer a young man and his reflexes were slow compared with what they had been during his days as an active agent. But no one with his background ever lost the razor-sharp sting of fear or forgot what to do when he felt it. Crouching and whirling about abruptly, he connected an elbow with someone's midsection. The assailant staggered backward in the darkened room, air whooshing from his lungs.

It gave Smith enough time to draw his automatic from the shoulder holster. He followed the man downward and planted one foot on the man's neck while he aimed the gun directly at the man's face.

"You get back on the bed," Smith growled over his shoulder at the young woman. He heard her soft footsteps move away, and then the squeak of the bed springs.

Smith recognized the man's face. It was the man who had led him from the bar.

"Sal-moan," Smith said. It was not a question. The man grunted and Smith dug the heel of his shoe, into the flesh of the man's neck.

"Are you Salmon?" Smith said. He pressed his foot down harder.

With an effort, the Puerto Rican nodded, his eyes bulging.

"Why did you set me up?" Smith ground his heel in harder. The barrel-chested man gestured helplessly and Smith lightened the pressure enough to allow the man to speak.

"Not my idea," the man gasped. "It's not me you want."

"I know who I want. Why did he send you to me?"

"The book-"

"Has he got it?" Salmon nodded. "I'm going to pay for it," Smith said. The Puerto Rican's eyes widened.

"You don't think I will, because I have a gun?" Smith said. "I don't want to use the gun and I don't want you two to follow me. I want that book and I'll pay for it. You understand?"

The man nodded.

Keeping the barrel of the gun flush against Salmon's head, Smith stepped back. "Get up," he said.

The man shambled to his feet, watching Smith carefully as the American picked up his leather attache case.

"I want to see Keenan Mikulka," Smith said. Salmon drove Smith's car at gunpoint through the gently rolling tropical hills. The macadam roads became gravel, then dirt, then little more than trails with grassy strips between two rows of tire-worn earth. He stopped the car at the foot of a hill dense with scrub bush and giant tropical ferns.

"Can't go no further," the Puerto Rican said. "Got to walk now."

Smith leveled the gun at his face. "You first," he said.

They trekked up the overgrown hill, following a snaking foot trail. Halfway up the slope, Smith spotted a roof of corrugated tin shining in the red light of the lowering sun.

Salmon pointed. "He's in there," he said. "He's got a gun too."

His eyes never leaving Salmon's, Smith shouted: "Mikulka. Keenan Mikulka."

Silence.

"My name is Smith. I've got your friend. We're alone. Come down here. I want to talk."

After a moment, Smith heard the rustling of leaves near the shack, then a voice calling back:

"What do you want to talk about?"

"Business. I'll buy the telephone book from you."

"Who says I even know what you're talking about?" Smith poked Salmon with the gun.

"It's okay. He knows," the Puerto Rican yelled. "He's got money."

"How much?" the voice answered.

"We'll talk when I see you," Smith called out. Footsteps sounded through the undergrowth. Finally a young man stepped into the clearing, across from Smith and Salmon.

Mikulka appeared to be in his late twenties with the seedy look of a man who had given up hoping or dreaming. An Army-regulation Colt was in his right hand, its barrel aimed directly at Smith.

"Suppose you put down that itty-bitty gun of yours," Mikulka said, smiling crookedly.

"It won't take a very big bullet to blow out your friend's brains," Smith said. The Puerto Rican was sweating profusely. "Let's go up to where you're staying. I want to deal."

"Suppose I don't?" Mikulka said.

Smith shrugged, a small economical gesture. "I've got the money," he said. "And more than one bullet." The young man snorted derisively, but started to back up the hill.

Smith pushed Salmon forward, so that the Puerto Rican was sandwiched between the two guns.

The tin-roofed shack was sweltering and dark. Inside were a rumpled cot, a table and a small kerosene cookstove.

"Where's the money?" Mikulka demanded.

Smith tossed the attache case onto the dirty table, then snapped it open with one hand. The interior of the case was lined, corner to corner and as deep as the case, with United States currency. Old bills in stacks, encircled by rubber bands.

"How much is there?" Mikulka's voice betrayed his astonishment.

"A hundred thousand in unmarked twenties," Smith said.

"Dios," Salmon breathed softly.

Smith placed his weapon on the table. Warily, Mikulka did the same.

"What's the deal?" the young man asked.

"I should think that's obvious," Smith said with some distaste. "You get the money and I get back the book you stole from me."

Mikulka chewed his lip. "Suppose I got other takers?" he taunted. "That ain't no list of call-Florrie-for-a-good-time. I think maybe some foreign countries might be willing to put up more than a hundred grand to find out just what you do all alone in that big office by yourself."

Salmon started to speak but Mikulka silenced him with a violent gesture.

"You haven't had time to make any contacts," Smith said evenly. "You probably haven't even broken the code and when you do, what'll you find? Seventeen-year-old phone numbers."

"I think I've got as much time as I want," Mikulka said. He lit a cigarette, holding it between his teeth.

"You're wrong, Mikulka. The information in that book is old material. No government will want it. It's old material."

"Then why do you want it so bad?" Salmon broke in.

"Sentimental value," Smith said. He turned back to Mikulka. "At any rate, no foreign agent is going to pay you and let it go at that. You're in over your head, son."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Mikulka snapped.

"Sorry, but I do," Smith said. "First thing I know is that you're a cheap, unimportant nobody with a police record."

"Hey, wait a minute-"

Smith waved him down. "No intelligence service in the world is going to let you live for five minutes after they buy that document from you. If they did buy it. Don't you understand? You'll be killed. That's a guarantee."

The cigarette dangled nonchalantly from Mikulka's lips but his Adam's apple wobbled. He was frightened: Good, Smith thought. The young man didn't know anything. It apparently had never occurred to him that the United States government would be as interested in the phone book as any foreign government. He had just stolen without thinking. But Smith had told him one great truth. No agent worth anything would let Mikulka or Salmon live for five minutes after getting the coded address book.

"Decision time," Smith said. "Will you take the money or not? I've got a plane to catch."

Mikulka hesitated, then motioned for Salmon to come closer. They exchanged whispers with their gazes riveted on Smith. -

The CURE director did not have to hear them to know what was being said. They would sell him the book, take the money, then kill him, and resell the document to another buyer. It was the way it was always done in movies and it was the logic of the thief, to take and to take again. Thieves always thought like thieves; trained agents didn't.

"Yes or no?" Smith snapped the attache case shut: As he did, his thumb broke a small piece of black metal off the right-hand clasp.

Five minutes, he thought.

"Suppose we want more time?" Mikulka suggested, his eyes mocking.

"I'm afraid you're out of time."

Mikulka and Salmon exchanged glances. From beneath the cot, Mikulka picked up a battered black leather address book and tossed it to Smith. "When you're out of time, you're out of time," he said with a halfhearted attempt at a grin.

Smith gave a polite nod, then picked his gun up from the table. Mikulka also retrieved his Colt. Another standoff.

"I think I ought to count that money," Mikulka said. "A hundred thousand, you said?"

"Right. Count it," Smith said. "I'm going to wait outside. With the book."

Four minutes.

He tucked the book into his jacket pocket and backed out of the shack. They were cowards, he knew, and would wait for him to turn his back. And he was counting on their trying to hide behind the walls of the shack while they picked him off.

As he moved outside, he saw the two men's eyes following him. Their faces wore the self-satisfied expressions of muggers cornering an old lady on an empty street.

Mikulka sat behind the table, opened the case and began to riffle through the money. - Smith backed away, twenty yards from the shack, standing there, looking at the rickety building. Thirty seconds. He began to count down.

He heard movement from inside. Fifteen seconds.

Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve ... "It's all here," Mikulka called out.

"Good. Good-bye, then," Smith yelled. Three seconds.

He turned his back, offering himself as a target. Then he threw himself on the ground a split second before the report of the gun sounded through the woods. He half-rolled toward the cover of a termiteeaten log.

And then there was another sound.

The explosion tore the roof off the shack, sending ribbons of metal raining over the forest in a light show of orange sparks. A wall of dirt and rotted vegetation shot upward in a circle, then plummeted down. Smith covered his head. A rock fell painfully onto his thigh but he did not move. Overhead, a thousand tropical birds screeched as a stand of bamboos toppled and crashed like toothpicks.

And then it was silent.

Smith dusted himself off and walked back to the ruins of the shack. Mikulka lay faceup in the debris. His features were unrecognizable. He had no eyes and his hands seemed to have been shredded by the blast. He must have been holding the case of money even as he was firing at Smith. Salmon's body was ripped into three fat parts.

In the dust and smoke, a piece of paper drifted. Smith caught it. It was part of a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill, one of five thousand identical bills Smith had carried in the exploding suitcase.

Smith felt the texture of the bill. It was a good copy. Nearby, several small fires smoldered. He kicked one to life and when the flames were high enough, he took the address book from his pocket and threw it into the blaze. He waited until there was nothing left of the book except white ashes.

Then he stomped on the ashes and left.

Back in San Juan, he stopped at the Western Union office and sent a telegram to Mrs. Eileen Mikulka, care of Folcroft Sanitarium, Rye, New York:

DEAR MOTHER SORRY I CAUSED YOU SUCH GRIEF STOP AM SHIPPING OUT TODAY ON MERCHANT SHIP BOUND FOR SOUTH PACIFIC STOP NOT COMING BACK STOP I LOVE YOU STOP KEENAN.

Thirty words exactly. Smith thought about things like that.

Chapter 16

Waldron Perriweather III strode easily into the office of Dara Worthington at IHAEO labs and handed the woman his card.

"I'm here to see Dr. Remo and Dr. Chiun," he said.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Periwinkle, but they are not available right now," Dara said, handing him his card back.

"It's Perriweather, not Periwinkle, you egg-layer," he said acidly. "Surely you've heard of me."

"What did you call me?"

"I called you an egg-layer."

"I know who you are," Dara said suddenly. "You're the lunatic who's always making excuses for violence."

"And you belong in a nest," Perriweather said. "Get those two scientists out here."

"You are the crudest-"

"In a nest with orange peels and coffee grounds on the bottom. Get them, I said."

Dara pressed an intercom button that made her voice reverberate around the IHAEO complex.

"I think you are a matter for security, Mr. Perriweather: You understand? Security."

"I have no intention of discussing anything with a breeder. Bring on your scientists."

Inside the main lab, Remo heard Dara's voice. "Security," he said. "I think that's us."

Chiun unfolded himself from a lotus position atop one of the tables.

"About time," he grumbled. "No wonder scientists are always being given prizes. They deserve medals for their ability to endure boredom."

"I think some of them do more than sit on tables," Remo said.

"If they were afflicted with ungrateful pupils the way I am, they would be under the tables, not on them," Chiun said.

"Why don't we go see what Dara wants?" Remo said.

"If you wish. But if the two of you start noisily coupling in her office, I do not know if I will be able to control myself."

"I'll keep a lid on it, Little Father."

"See that you do."

"Ah. Drs. Remo and Chiun," Perriweather said. He handed his card toward Remo, who ignored it. He shoved it into Chiun's hand. Chiun tore it up.

"What seems to be the trouble, Dara?" Remo asked.

"This one called me an egg-layer."

Chiun chuckled. "An egg-layer," he snorted. "What a wonderful term for the white female."

Dara threw her hands up over her head in exasperation and stormed from the office.

"I am Chiun," the Korean said to Perriweather, nodding slightly.

"And you must be Dr. Remo?" Perriweather said.

"Just Remo will do."

Perriweather thrust his hand forward toward Remo, who ignored it. In a quick glance, Perriweather appraised the young man with the thick wrists. He didn't look much like a scientist. He looked more like a security man, probably around to protect the old Oriental. He smiled involuntarily. The late Dr. Ravits could tell them a thing or two about the value of security men, he thought.

But no matter. It just made his work easier than he had expected it to be.

"I greatly admired your work on eradicating the Ung beetle from Uwenda," he said.

Remo had appraised Perriweather too. The man was too smooth, too well dressed and too polished to be a scientist. But his fingernails were dirty.

"You read about it in the papers?"

"Yes," Perriweather said. "You see, I have some interest in entomology myself. Have a very sophisticated lab in my home. You should see it."

"Why?" Remo said coldly.

"Because as the two foremost entomologists at IHAEO, your opinions on an experiment of mine would be really useful."

"His opinion would not be useful at all," Chiun said, glancing at Remo. "He does not even know the correct clothing to wear. How could you expect him to appreciate science?"

Perriweather looked at Chiun, then in confusion glanced at Remo.

"My opinion's as good as anybody else's," Remo said testily. "What kind of bug work do you do, Periwinkle?"

"Perriweather," the man corrected. "And please, say 'insect.' 'Bug' is a term . . ." He stopped and took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself. "They are not bugs. They are insects," he finally said. "And because of your magnificent work on the Ung beetle, I came to alert you to an even greater danger which I have managed to isolate in my laboratory."

"What is it?" Remo said.

"I'd rather show you," Perriweather said. He moved closer and Remo could smell the scent of decay and rotting food on the man's skin. "I know you people have had trouble here with terrorists. Well, since I have been working on this project, I've gotten threats. I expect an attack tonight on my laboratory."

"You've got to tell me something about what your work is about," Remo told Perriweather. "And please stand downwind."

"Don't tell him anything," Chiun told Perriweather. "He'll forget it in two minutes. He remembers nothing, that one."

There was something going on between these two that Perriweather did not understand, so he elected to talk only to Remo.

"There is a new strain of insect," Perriweather said. "If proliferates very quickly and if my guess is correct, it could rule the earth within weeks."

"Then why are you smiling?" Remo said.

"Just nerves, I guess," Perriweather said. He clasped a hand over his mouth. Remo noticed that the man's fingers were long and thin and sharply angled at the joints, like the legs of a spider.

"We'd better go see this thing," Remo said.

"I think it's important," Perriweather said. "I have a private plane waiting."

Remo took Chiun aside. "Talk to him for a few minutes. I want to call Smitty and check him out."

"Yes," Chiun said. As Remo walked to the door, Chiun called out, "You can tell the egg-layer to return to her post. Heh, heh. Egg-layer. Heh, heh."

Remo dialed the telephone and listened to the clicks as the call switched from Albany through Denver and through Toronto before a telephone finally rang on the island of St. Martin in the Caribbean.

"Hello?" a quavering voice said.

Remo paused before answering. "Who is this?" he said suspiciously.

"It's Barry," the voice whimpered. "I suppose you're calling for Dr. Smith?"

"Maybe," Remo said cautiously.

"I'll have to take a message. He's not here. I wish he was. I really miss him."

"Barry who? Who are you?" Remo asked.

"Barry Schweid. I'm Dr. Smith's best friend. His very best friend. You're the one called Remo, aren't you? What can I do for you?"

"When is Smitty coming in?"

"I don't know. I wish he was here right now. I don't like talking on the telephone," Barry Schweid said.

"Give him a message for me, will you?" Remo said.

"Go ahead. I'll write it down."

"Tell him I want to know about a man named Perriweather. Waldron Perriweather the Third."

"Does that begin with a P?" Barry asked. Remo hung up.

In the mansion, Perriweather led them past the gleaming white laboratory toward a dark corridor. "Don't you want us to see the lab?" Remo asked. "In a moment. There are a few things I'd like to show you first. There's a room down here. Just follow me."

"Something doesn't smell right here," Chiun said in Korean as they followed a few paces behind Perriweather down the dusty carpeted hall.

"It could be his fingernails," Remo responded in Korean. "Did you see them?"

"Yet his clothes are immaculate."

"But what was that stuff about Dara being an egg-layer?" Remo asked.

"Oh, that," Chiun said in dismissal. "Yes, that."

"When one is speaking of white women, all is fair," Chiun said.

"I'll ignore that," Remo said.

"He became incensed when you used the word 'bug,'" Chiun said.

"Strange for somebody who works with them all the time. Probably keeps them in his fingernails as pets."

"Silence," Chiun hissed in Korean.

"What?"

"There are sounds coming from the room at the end of the hall."

Remo pitched his hearing low. The old man was right. Behind the thick door at the end of the corridor something was breathing. Something huge from the sound of it. As they stepped closer, the breathing grew louder.

"Someone snoring, maybe," Remo said in Korean. "From the looks of this place, sleeping might be the most fun thing to do."

Chiun was not smiling.

"What's in there, Chiun?" Remo asked. "What kind of animal?"

"Two things," Chiun said.

The noise grew louder. Air was hissing out of lungs that sounded as if they were made of concrete. As they neared the doorway, they could smell something vile from inside the door. The air became foul and cold.

"Control your breathing," Chiun snapped in Korean.

The stench curled around them like smoke. Perriweather stepped back from the doorway. "What's in there?" Remo said.

"The things I want you to see," Perriweather said.

"Wait here for me. I've got to get something from the office."

"We'll wait," Remo said as Perriweather strode off. To Chiun, Remo said, "Whatever is in there knows we are coming."

"And doesn't like the idea," Chiun said. The noises from inside the room stopped for a moment, then exploded startlingly, before stopping abruptly.

Suddenly, behind them, a steel panel dropped, sealing off the corridor. At that moment, the heavy door ahead of them swung open.

Chiun looked at the heavy steel-plate panel. "Forward or back?" Remo said.

"I suppose we should see the surprise this lunatic has prepared for us," Chiun said.

The two men walked into the room. Two people, a man and a woman, were standing quietly inside, near the far wall. Their faces wore small smiles. Their hands were folded ceremoniously in front of them.

"Hello," said Remo. He turned to Chiun. "What do you make of this?"

"The animal sounds came from this room," Chiun said.

Gloria Muswasser smiled and she and Nathan moved away from each other. Between them, on the floor, was a puddle of blood in which floated a broken human skull. Gloria moved slowly toward Remo and Chiun.

"The wallpaper is red," Remo said, noticing it for the first time.

"It is not paper. It is blood," Chiun said.

Gloria opened her mouth. A vapor of foul-smelling gas belched from her like smoke from a chimney, along with a deep growl so loud and low it seemed to shake the walls. Her eyes glinted inhumanly.

"You ought to take something for that gas," Remo said. He casually extended a hand toward Gloria, but with one lightning-fast motion she swatted him across the room like a Ping-Pong ball. Instinctively Remo curled himself up and struck the wall with both feet, bouncing off unhurt.

"What the ... ?"

Nathan was coming at him, shrilling like a policecar whistle. His arms were outstretched, his fingers bloodied, his eyes glazed. From the corner of his vision, Remo could see the woman coming toward him too, her teeth bared like a rabid dog's in a vicious rictus of hatred.

"Take care of the man," Chiun said softly.

Remo saw the old man's arms move in a gentle teasing circle, then heard a piercing shriek as Gloria, wild-eyed, whirled in her tracks to attack the Korean.

And then Nathan was moving toward Remo, his head down oxlike, but moving as fast as a blink. As he circled Remo, swatting and lunging, his movements so quick they were hard to follow, Remo ducked the man's unfocused attacks as best he could.

One crashing thump landed on Remo's shoulder blades, knocking the wind out of him. As Remo tried to rise, Nathan jumped into the air, a full six feet high, then slammed feetfirst toward Remo.

"All right," Remo growled. "Enough of this." He spun out of the way a split second before Nathan landed. The force of the man's feet broke the floorboards beneath the carpet and Nathan sank in, his head tossing around bewilderedly.

"Hole," said Remo, pointing to the cavity around Nathan's feet.

"Naaaaargh," Nathan roared.

"Close enough," Remo said. He brought both fists down on Nathan's shoulders and concentrated his power on the points of impact. The big man fell through the floor with a deafening roar, pulling the carpet through the opening with him..

Remo glanced up to see Gloria lunging, screaming, toward Chiun. The old Oriental stood stock-still, his arms folded in front of him. He nodded toward Remo, who waited a split second, then stuck out his foot. She lurched forward, bellowing.

"Upsy daisy," Remo said, grabbing her foot and tossing her into the air.

She somersaulted twice, then fell facefirst into the hole through which the carpet had disappeared. She landed with a thunk.

"Adequate," Chiun told Remo.

"They're not growling anymore," Remo said. "Maybe they got knocked out."

"Not growling, but there is something else. Do you hear it?"

Remo listened. There was a low buzzing, faint but incessant, coming from the basement. Together the two men moved toward the hole in the floor as a swarm of flies, solidly black in the brightly-lit room, poured through the hole.

"I think we should leave," Remo said.

"Without knowing what is down there?" Chiun asked, pointing toward the hole.

"You go see. I'll wait here for you."

"The Master of Sinanju does not go climbing into basements."

Remo groaned to himself, then slid through the opening, blocking his breathing passages against the onslaught of flies that thickly blackened the cellar. As more insects escaped through the opening above, Remo could begin to see through the miasma of flying black bodies.

The bodies of the two creatures who had attacked them were lying in twisted positions on a heap of carpeting so covered with flies that they resembled lumps of chocolate more than human forms: Remo swatted a few dozen flies from their faces. Their eyes were wide open and beginning to glaze.

"They're dead," Remo shouted.

"So?"

"So what else do you want? There are about ten million flies down here," Remo said.

"So tell me something I don't know."

Remo looked around. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out some other shapes, all of them fuzzy and soft-looking from the carpet of flies covering them. Stomping and waving his arms; he cleared the insects from one of the shapes.

"Jesus," he said softly, as he saw the white bones emerge. It was the skeleton of a full-grown cow, its bones picked nearly clean. Only a few ragged pieces of rotting meat remained on the bones.

There were other skeletons, a dog, several cats, and something with horns that Remo thought must once have been a goat.

He jumped back up through the opening.

"It's a graveyard," he said. "Dead animals." He paused.

"More than a graveyard?" Chiun asked.

"Like a restaurant. A restaurant for flies," Remo said. "Let's get out of here."

By the time they had ripped down the heavy steel panel and searched the house, it was empty. Ferriweather had gone.

In the laboratory, nothing seemed out of place except for one Plexiglas cube with some elaborate apparatus attached to it. There was nothing inside but a piece of rancid meat and some flyspecks.

"You think this might mean something?" Remo asked.

"It is hardly the job of the Master of Sinanju to examine bug droppings," Chiun said haughtily. "We will leave those details to Emperor Smith. White men enjoy dung. That is how they invented disco dancing and frozen food."

Remo forced open a locked drawer and found inside a sheaf of papers covered with mathematical equations and illegible notes.

"These are letters and things. Notes. They belonged to ... let's see." He turned over one of the envelopes. "A Dexter Morley. There's a bunch of letters after his name."

"Letters?" Chiun asked.

"Yeah. Degree letters. Like Ph.D. I think he's a doctor, whoever he is."

"Yes, a doctor. A veterinarian, no doubt," said Chiun, looking with distaste at the sinks filled with toads and salamanders.

Chapter 17

When Smith entered the apartment in St. Martin, Barry Schweid was huddled in a corner, away from the bright sun, his blue blanket draped over his shoulders.

He looked up as Smith came in and his forlorn face suddenly lit up with joy, as intense and as consuming as the firing of a flashbulb.

"You came back. You really came back," Barry shouted. He lifted his pudge to his feet.

"As I told you I would, Barry," Smith said. He was carrying the small attache case, containing the CURE files, which he had reclaimed from the airport locker in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

As he set it on a coffee table, the latch on the handle popped open, and with a sigh, Smith opened the case and picked up the telephone.

"Yes?"

"This is your office, Dr. Smith."

"I know who you are, Mrs. Mikulka."

The woman's voice was cheerier than it had been the previous day. "I just wanted you to know that. . . I think the problem was discussed ... I mean . . ."

"I'm sure you have everything under control, Mrs. Mikulka," Smith said.

"Oh, it wasn't me. It was all very mysterious and then I got this telegram and-"

"Mrs. Mikulka, I really have to be on about my business," Smith said. "Perhaps this conversation will wait."

"I understand, Dr. Smith. About my resignation . . ."

"You're not resigning," Smith said flatly.

"I thought you'd want me to," she said.

"I don't know where you got that idea," Smith said.

"Well, it . . . uh, well . . ." she sputtered.

"Carry on, Mrs. Mikulka."

When he replaced the phone, Barry Schweid asked, "Can I get you some Kool-Aid, Harold?"

"No, Barry."

"Here. I already poured it." He handed Smith a glass of something vaguely green.

Smith took it. "It's not cold," he said.

"The ice melted. I poured it yesterday just after you left. I really missed you, Harold."

Smith cleared his throat.

"I tried to fill up my time, though. I collected rocks and worked on cosmic refractions that store all your files and talked to your friend Remo on the telephone."

"What?" Smith glared at the butterball little man. "Why didn't you tell me sooner? When did he call?"

"This morning. He said something about a man named Perriweather."

"What about him?" Smith said angrily.

"He didn't know. He wanted you to find out who he was." As Schweid spoke, he opened Smith's attache case and began to speak aloud as he typed onto the keyboard:

"Waldron Perriweather the Third, Address . . ." Smith went into the kitchen, poured out the Kool-Aid and drew a glass of cold water from the faucet. When he reentered the living room, Schweid handed him a long sheet of paper. Smith glanced at it, then nodded.

"Did I do good, Harold? Are you happy with me?"

"You did fine, Barry," Smith said. He called Remo at the IHAEO labs but was told they were out of town in Massachusetts.

Reading from Barry Schweid's computer printout, Smith dialed Perriweather's telephone number. "Speak," came a familiar voice.

"Smith here. What's on your mind, Remo?"

"What's on my mind is that last night we had to get rid of an atomic bomb. And now we've got three bodies here and a goddamn bone zoo. You think you could cut short the island madness and come lend a hand?"

"Who are the three bodies?" Smith asked. "Don't know."

"Who killed them?"

"We did. Well, two of them," Remo said. "Listen, Smitty, there's too much to explain over the phone. Speaking of which, who's the dork you have answering the phone? I didn't think anybody was allowed to answer your phone."

"That's usually correct," Smith said. "But these were extraordinary circumstances."

"What's that mean?"

"I was called away on business," Smith said.

"What'd you do, find a store that was giving bigger discounts on paper clips? Come on, Smitty, let's get on the ball. Things are cooking around here."

"I'd rather not stay on this open line too long," Smith said.

"All right, one thing more," Remo said. "A name. Dexter Morley. I think he's a professor or something."

"What about him?"

"He's the one we didn't kill."

"How did he die?"

"If he's the one I think, in a puddle."

"A puddle of what?"

"A puddle of himself. That's all that was left of him except for some papers we can't make out, scientific stuff. That is, if he's even the corpse. We don't know."

"I'll be back in a few hours," Smith said as he replaced the receiver.

Barry sat back down in the corner, wrapped the sliver of blanket around him like a silk scarf and stuck the end of it in his mouth and stared glassily, pouting ahead.

"Now, Barry, stop that," Smith said. He frowned to cover his embarrassment at seeing a grown man and the smartest man he'd ever met acting like an infant.

"You're the only friend Blankey and I ever had," the fat man whimpered, still staring straight ahead. "And now you're going away."

"Blankey has no feelings," Smith said. "It's an inanimate object. Blankey . . ." He stopped, annoyed with himself for referring to a blanket as if it were a person. "You've just got to learn to get along without me sometimes. After all, you got along before you met me, didn't you?"

"Wasn't the same," Barry sniffed.

Unable to deal with irrationality, Smith left the room to pack his things.

It was inexplicable, Smith thought as he placed his extra three-piece gray suit, identical to the one he was wearing, in a plastic garment bag that he had gotten free from a clothing store fifteen years earlier. He was the farthest thing from a father image that he could think of, and yet the computer genius had grabbed onto him as if he were Smith's little boy.

It was ridiculous. Even Smith's own natural daughter had never been dandled on his knee or told a bedtime story. His wife, Irma, always took care of those things, and like a sensible woman, Irma had understood that her husband was not the type of man one clung to for emotional comfort. Harold Smith did not believe in emotion.

He had spent his entire life looking for truth, and truth was not emotional. It was neither good nor bad, happy nor distressing. It was just true. If Smith was a cold man, it was because facts were cold. It didn't mean that he wasn't human. He just wasn't a slobbering fool. At least Irma had had the intelligence always to realize that.

Now why couldn't Barry Schweid understand that? If Smith wanted to play father in some misguided moment of maudlinism, he hardly would have picked an emotional cripple whose only solace in life was a ratty old blanket. It embarrassed Smith even to think of him. Fat, homely Barry Schweid with the gumption of a hamster.

What complicated it all was that the sniveling wreck possessed the brain of an Einstein, and genius had to be forgiven some shortcomings.

But not this. No, Smith decided. He would not take Barry Schweid back to the United States. He would not be manipulated by childish tears into living out the rest of his life with an overweight albatross wrapped around his neck, clutching onto a spittle-covered blanket. No.

He zipped up the plastic garment bag to the spot halfway where the zipper no longer worked, then taped the rest of it together with pieces of masking tape. He carried the bag out into the living room.

"I think we've come up with something," Barry said without turning around. He was kneeling on the floor near the coffee table and Smith's attache case. His blanket was on his shoulder.

"What do you mean?" Smith said.

"That name you wrote down. Dexter Morley. He's a prominent entomologist from the University of Toronto. In earlier years, he was an associate of Dr. Ravits, the one who was killed. He helped Ravits to isolate pheromones, the substances that attract animals to each other. Then two years ago, he disappeared."

"Interesting," Smith said blandly. It was interesting. Ravits had been killed by terrorists, and now Remo may have found the body of Dr. Dexter Morley, a former Ravits associate, also dead. And he had been killed in the home of Waldron Perriweather III, who was a well-known spokesman for animal groups. Was it possible that Perriweather was behind all the violence?

"I looked it up in the computer," Barry said. "Actually, I knew that part already. Most scientists know about Morley's disappearance a couple of years ago. But I found out something even more interesting."

"What's that?"

"Will you take me with you?" Barry said. He turned tearful eyes toward Smith.

"No, Barry," Smith said. "I will not."

"I just wanted to go with you."

"Quite impossible. Now will you give me that information or not? It will save me a few minutes' work."

"All right," Barry whined. "I learned about Dr. Morley when I was in school because I studied entomology. Some believed that Morley had made a scientific breakthrough on the pheromones and left because he did not want to share credit with Dr. Ravits. Others thought that he had just had a breakdown and ran away."

"Well?" Smith said impatiently.

"Because the name came in in connection with Perriweather, I started to look at banks where Perriweather lives. And there's a Dexter Morley listed at the Beverly First Savings with a bank balance of two hundred and one thousand dollars."

Smith arched an eyebrow, and pleased by the man's reaction, Barry rushed along with his story.

"I'm sure it's him. I've cross indexed him a lot."

"So Morley might have been hired away from Ravits at a big salary increase?" Smith said.

"I couldn't find anything about an employer, though," Barry said. "All the deposits were made in cash."

"I presume because the employer didn't want anyone to know about it," Smith said.

"Morley must have lived with his employer too because there's no listing of him as homeowner, tenant or telephone user within a hundred-mile radius of Beverly."

"Interesting," Smith said.

"I could really be helpful," Barry wheedled. His brow creased.

"I don't know, Barry," Smith said.

"Just tell me what you need, Harold. I want to earn my way. You'll be glad you took me along. Really you will. I can install the device on your other computers to prevent break-in. I'm better at that than you are. And I can help with this Dexter Morley. I studied entomology for three years."

"Three years isn't very much study in a field like that, is it?" Smith asked.

Barry looked hurt. "In three years, I read every major work on the subject written in English. My reading in French and Japanese was extensive too. I had to read German and Chinese in translation."

"I see," Smith said.

"They were good translations though," Barry offered. "Give me a chance, Harold."

Barry rose from the table, biting his lip. The fingers clutching the piece of paper in his hand were white. Barry might be helpful, Smith thought, in translating Dexter Morley's notes, if those were what Remo had. But what would Smith do with him after that? After the project was over and done with, and there was no more use for Barry Schweid, what would Smith do with him? There was an answer in the back of his mind, but he did not want to think about it. Not now.

"After I'm done, I'll take care of myself," Schweid said.

"It's only a work project," Smith said.

"For you, it's only a project."

Smith sighed. "All right," he said finally. Barry's face broke into a large grin.

"But I won't be responsible for you before, during or after. Is that clear?"

"Like crystal," Barry Schweid said adoringly. Smith ground his teeth together in frustration as he closed the attache-case computer. Something told him he had just made a terrible mistake. Barry was too attached to him and now Smith was taking him into a real world, a world where people had the power to kill and were not reluctant to use that power. Would the slings and arrows of ordinary life destroy the fragile young man?

Smith closed his eyes for a moment to squeeze the thought away. There was nothing he could do about it. After all, he was not Barry Schweid's keeper.

But then, he thought, who was?

* * *

Remo and Chiun were still waiting when Smith arrived at the Perriweather mansion.

"I trust the police haven't been here yet," Smith said.

"Nobody alive to call them," Remo said. "Except us, and we don't like the police stomping around. Who's that?" He cocked his head toward the rotund little man who seemed to be trying to hide behind Smith.

Smith cleared his throat. "Errr, this is my associate, Barry Schweid."

"And Blankey," Barry said.

"And Blankey?" Remo said.

"And Blankey," Barry said, holding up the piece of blue material.

"Oh," Remo said. "Well, you and Blankey stay right there. We have to talk privately." He grabbed Smith's arm and pulled him to a far corner of the room.

"I think the time has come for me to talk to you," Remo said.

"Oh, yes? What about?"

"About Butterball and Blankey."

"Why does that bother you?" Smith said.

"Why does that bother me? All right, I'll tell you why that bothers me. For ten years I have heard nothing from you except secrecy, secrecy, secrecy. I have sent more people than I care to remember into the Great Void because they found out something they shouldn't have about CURE. Remember those? They were all assignments from you."

"Yes, I remember them. Every one of them," Smith said.

"So what are we doing here with this cretin?" he said, nodding toward Barry.

"Barry has been doing some work for me on the CURE computers, to make them tamper-proof. And he understands entomology. I thought he would be helpful here in deciphering those notes."

"Wonderful. And now he has seen Chiun and me."

"Yes, that's true, since we're all in the same room together," Smith said dryly.

"And you're not concerned?" Remo asked.

"No. Barry is, well, Barry is different. He can't relate things to reality. He could learn everything about our operation, and never once understand that it involves real people in the real world. He lives in a computer-generated fantasy world. But I appreciate your concern."

"Well, appreciate this. When you want him killed because he knows too much, you do it yourself," Remo said.

"That will never be necessary," Smith said.

"I think it will be. Consider yourself on notice," Remo said.

"Thank you for sharing this with me," Smith said in a tone so bland that Remo could not tell if he was joking or not. He decided Smith wasn't; Smith never joked.

"So let's not waste any more time," Smith said. "What have you found?"

"You mean the bodies? You're looking at one of them," Remo said, gesturing toward the red-streaked walls and then to a dried puddle at the end of the room in which a skull sat.

Smith gaped in amazement. "That's what's left?"

"That and some spots on the rug. But the rug's downstairs with the other bodies."

"The ones your asssassins are responsible for, Emperor," Chiun said proudly.

"What did they do to warrant death?" Smith asked.

"They attacked first," Remo said.

"I mean before that. What were the circumstances?"

"There weren't any circumstances. That Perriweather weirdo told us to come here, locked us up with the lunatics and took off. There were two of them, a man and a woman. They tried to have us for lunch and we wouldn't let them."

"And they said nothing?"

"Oh, they did," Remo said. "They said a lot."

"What did they say?"

"They said 'Grrrrr' and 'Naaaarrrgh' and I think they said 'Ssssssss.' Little Father, did they say 'Ssssssss'?"

"Yes," Chiun said. "They also said 'Urrrrr.' "

"I knew I forgot something," Remo told Smith. "They said 'Urrrrr' too."

"The woman also?" Smith asked.

"She was as nothing," Chiun said modestly.

"Nothing if you call a bulldozer nothing," Remo said. "They were both as strong as gorillas. What's he doing?" He gestured toward Barry, who was kneeling on the floor scraping at the walls with something that looked like a tongue depressor.

"Preparing slides," Barry said cheerfully. He deposited the wall scrapings into a white envelope and flung his blanket expertly around his neck. "Where are the others?"

"He know what he's doing?" Remo asked Smith skeptically.

Smith nodded. "We'll need blood samples of the dead to check to see if it's got anything to do with the Ravits experiments."

"Ravits? He worked on bugs," Remo said.

"There may be a connection," Smith said. "The other bodies?"

Remo pointed to a small round table placed strangely, upside down, in the center of the bare floor. "Under there," he said.

As Smith moved the table aside, a swarm of flies buzzed into the room. The CURE director swatted them away with an air of distaste and peered down into the darkness.

"How do we get down there?"

"Take my advice, Smitty. You don't want to see the cellar of this place. Send the boy explorer there. It's a job for him and Super-Blankey."

"What's down there?"

"Flies, mostly. A lot of rotten meat."

"Meat? What kind of meat?"

"Cows, dogs, that kind. And two humans, or semihumans, if the flies haven't picked them clean already," Remo said.

Smith shuddered.

"I'll be glad to go, Harold," Barry said agreeably. "If you'll just hold onto one end of Blankey."

"Harold, is it?" Remo said to Smith. "Sure, kid," he called out. "I'll give you a hand."

He lowered Schweid into the cellar using the blanket as a rope.

There was silence for a few minutes, then a soft exclamation.

"Barry," Smith called, covering his face as he peered down into the opening. "Are you all right?"

"It's fantastic," Schweid said.

There was some shuffling around, followed by a giggle.

"Okay. I can come up now," Barry called.

"I was hoping you'd decide to stay," Remo mumbled as he pulled Barry up.

Schweid came through the hole covered with flies and grinning like a loon. Smith made a halfhearted attempt to swat the flies away but Barry did not seem to notice their presence.

"It was amazing," he said breathlessly to Smith. "You really owe it to yourself to take a look."

"I don't think that will be necessary," Smith said, quickly moving the table back to cover the hole in the floor. "Did you take blood samples?"

"Yes, of course. But did you notice the flies?"

"Hard not to," Remo said.

"How many species did you count?" Schweid asked.

"We weren't counting," Remo said.

"More's the pity," Schweid said, grinning triumphantly. He pulled a white envelope from his back pocket. It was filled with squirming, dying flies, squashed together in a heap.

"Ugh," Chiun said.

"There must have been a hundred different species down there," Barry said. "There's at least fifteen in here and this is just a quick sample."

"Just goes to show you that a little rotten meat goes a long way," Remo said.

"Don't you see?" Barry said. "That's what's so unusual. Almost none of these species are indigenous to this area." He looked from Smith to Remo to Chiun. "Don't you all see? The flies were brought here. The meat in the basement was supplied to feed them."

"A fly hotel," Remo said. "Is that like a roach motel?"

"What are you getting at, Barry?" Smith asked.

"Somebody wanted those flies to be here, Harold."

"Perriweather," Remo said.

"He looked like a creature who would like flies," Chiun said. "Even if he did have a way with words. Egg-layer. Heh, heh, heh."

"What's he talking about?" Smith asked Remo.

"You had to be there," Remo said. "Never mind."

"What about the papers you found?" Smith asked.

Remo pulled a thick stack of papers out of his pocket and handed them to Smith, who looked at them and said, "They're some kind of notes."

"I knew that," Remo said.

Barry was peeking over Smith's shoulder. "Can I look at them, Harold?"

"Sure," Remo said. "Show them to Blankey too." Barry spread the papers out on the floor and hunched over in the center of them, unconsciously twisting the corner of his blanket into a point and sticking it in his ear.

"Unbelievable," he said.

"What's unbelievable?" Smith asked.

"I'll need the blood analyses to be sure," Barry said. "But if these papers are right, all the deaths around here are the result of a fly."

"A lot of flies," Remo said. "We've got a whole cellar full of them."

"No," Barry said, shaking his head. "A special kind of fly. A fly that can change the source of evolution."

"Imagine that," Remo said.

'If these notes are correct, Morley made the biggest discovery since the discovery of DNA," Barry said.

"Is that anything like PDQ?" Remo asked.

"Don't be belligerent, Remo," Smith said. "Come on, Barry. We're going back to Folcroft. I'll get you lab equipment there."

"And us?" Remo asked.

"Go back to the IHAEO labs," Smith said. "Until we find out if Perriweather is behind all this and until we have him under control."

"No sweat," Remo said. "We'll have him under control."

"How's that?" Smith said.

"We'll just wrap him up in Blankey," Remo said.

Chapter 18

Waldron Perriweather III sat in the middle of the sofa in his suite at the Hotel Plaza in New York City. The jeweled box containing the desiccated body of Mother Fly rested on the arm of the brocaded sofa.

Perriweather had moved aside the coffee table to make room for a small upright video camera mounted on a tripod. He leaned forward to adjust the focus, turned the sound level to medium, then sat back down. With his right hand, out of camera view, he tripped a level that began the camera running. He spoke earnestly, staring directly into the lens.

"Americans. Note that I do not say 'My fellow Americans' because I am not one of your fellows, nor are you mine. Nor do I count myself as of any other nationality. My name is Waldron Perriweather the Third and I do not count myself among any people from whom murder is a daily way of life, as it is with you. For, each day, you seek to decimate the oldest and most self-sufficient type of life which has ever existed.

"You are insect-haters all, from the housewife who carelessly, without thought, murders a struggling life on her kitchen windowsill, to the wealthy executives of the pesticide companies who deal out death in the billions and trillions each day.

"I am accusing you on behalf of the Species Liberation Alliance, in defense of the countless small lives you snuff out hourly without thought, and worse, without remorse. I accuse you."

He held out a bony finger, pointing it directly at the camera.

"Take, as an example, the small housefly. Maligned throughout history, the fly ensures the renewal of the planet in a way far greater than man can even attempt. Can you, do you, eat garbage? No. You only create garbage. With your food, your disposal containers, even your very bodies after your own horrendously long tenure on earth, you make garbage. The fly lives but a moment of a human's lifespan and yet he does so much more than any human.

"You regard yourselves as the ultimate creation of nature, but you are wrong, grossly wrong.

"The fly is the supreme conqueror of earth. He has existed longer, his numbers are greater and his adaptability is a thousand times greater than your own."

He lowered his head, then peered up intently toward the camera.

"And that is what I had arranged to talk to you about today. The adaptability of the fly. A particular fly, never before seen on earth, named by me Musca perriweatheralis. The fly that will restore nature to its original balance. The fly that will become lord of the earth."

He spoke for another fifteen minutes, then packed up the tape he had made. He placed it carefully in a box addressed to the Continental Broadcasting Company, the largest television network in America, went to the hotel lobby and dropped it into the mailbox.

Outside, the noise and clatter of New York City attacked his ears. People rushed by the hotel entrance, at least a hundred in two minutes.

There were so many human beings in the world: Far too many.

But that would end soon. Musca perriweatheralis would inherit the earth. And master it.

Back in his suite, he stroked the dead fly's back idly as he switched on the television set for the news.

"A bizarre report just came in from the wealthy North Shore in Massachusetts," an announcer said. "Police report that two bodies have been found brutally murdered in the home of millionaire Waldron Perriweather III."

Perriweather smiled idly.

"The two victims were identified as Gloria and Nathan Muswasser of Washington, D.C., and of SoHo district of New York. Police said the bodies were found in a cellar that was filthy and fly-infested and, as one officer said, 'like something out of the Dark Ages.' Police spokesmen said there is a possibility of a third murder as well. Mr. Perriweather, who is a well-known spokesman for animal-protection causes, could not be reached for comment."

Perriweather turned off the set with angry fire in his shallow blue eyes. The Muswassers' bodies. Three dead, not five.

"The Muswassers," he whispered in disbelief. Surely those two fools masquerading as scientists had not been able to kill Gloria and Nathan, not in their strengthened state. What had gone wrong?

Was it possible? Had those two killed them? Just who were this Dr. Remo and Dr. Chiun?

"Hello," came a sleepy voice at the other end of the phone line.

"Anselmo?"

"Yeah. Zat you, boss?"

"I'm at the Plaza Hotel in Room 1505. Come over here immediately and come right up. Don't ask for me because I'm registered under a different name."

"Right now?" Anselmo said.

"Right now."

"Ah, jeez, boss."

"Right now. And bring Myron with you."

When the two thugs arrived, Perriweather handed them a clear plastic container. In it were a few grains of sugar and a fly with red wings.

"I want you to take this to the IHAEO labs," Perriweather said. "Get in a room with two scientists named Remo and Chiun, then release the fly."

"That's it?" Anselmo said with some bewilderment. "You want we should deliver a fly?"

"That is correct."

"Like should we bash in their heads or something too?" Myron said. "I mean, we want you should get your money's worth."

"That won't be necessary. Just deliver the fly."

"Do we have to catch it and bring it back?" Anselmo asked.

"No. I've got many more," Perriweather said and began to giggle. The sound was so eerie and frightening that Myron nudged Anselmo in the ribs and pushed him toward the door.

Perriweather stared at the door as it closed behind the two men. It was time, he thought, to rid himself of Anselmo and Myron. If this Remo and Chiun had eliminated the Muswassers, the two brainless thugs should be no problem.

And Remo and Chiun would be no problem for Musca perriweatheralis. The container holding the fly was made of spun sugar and within six hours, the fly would eat its way out. If Remo and Chiun were near, they were dead.

He stroked the dead insect's back and then closed the jeweled casket.

"One of our children has already left the nest, Mother," he said. "Its work has begun."

An airline shuttle and a cab brought Anselmo and Myron to the parking lot of the IHAEO laboratories. As they stepped from the taxicab, they shielded their faces from the bright summer sun. "Wish I could be swimming today," Anselmo said.

"Tomorrow you can swim," Myron said. "Tomorrow it'll probably rain. I should be swimming today, not delivering flies."

"We've had worse jobs," Myron said.

"But not stupider ones," Anselmo said. He held the tiny transparent cube up to the sunlight. "Kitchee koo," he said, scratching his finger tightly on the cube. "Hey, it looks like there's some kind of hole here."

"Where?" Myron said, squinting at the cube. "Here on the side."

"That's all we need," Myron said. "Get a job to deliver a fly and lose the frigging fly. Put your finger over it or something till we drop it off inside."

"I guess so," Anselmo said. He took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and placed it over the pin-sized hale.

"What's that for? You afraid of disease?"

"Maybe," Anselmo said.

"Stupid, that fly's been raised in a lab, probably. It don't have no germs."

"It still craps," Anselmo said.

Anselmo hoisted Myron up to the level of the window.

"They in there?"

"A young scrawny guy and an old gook, right?"

"That's what he said," Anselmo said.

"They're in there. But they don't look like no scientists to me," Myron said.

He saw the old Oriental, dressed in a tangerine-colored robe, sitting quietly in a corner of the room, scratching on a rolled-up piece of parchment with a quill pen. The young man was vaulting in a series of somersaults across the room, then hit the wall, did another loop, and landed on his feet soundlessly. Without hesitation, he did the same maneuver backward across the room.

Anselmo let Myron down to the ground.

"One guy's writing on wallpaper and the other guy's jumping around like a chimpanzee," Myron said. "They ain't no scientists."

"What do you know?" Anselmo said. "Let's get into the place, do what we gotta do, and leave."

"I'd still like to beat them up a little bit, to make sure Perriweather gets his money's worth," Myron said.

"No freebies," Anselmo said. "Paid for delivery, that's all we do is deliver. Nothing else. Like the Bible says, 'The workman is worth whatever you pay him.' "

The conversation was too deep for Myron, who walked away from Anselmo and began to jimmy the window of the room next to Remo and Chiun's lab. "We'll sneak in this way," he said.

"Chiun," Remo said.

"Leave me in peace. Can you not see I am busy?"

"What are you doing?"

"I am writing a beautiful tender epic poem about the ingratitude of a worthless pupil for his teacher."

"Well, this worthless pupil hears two goons outside the window."

"Yes," Chiun said. "And would you ask them to please restrain the noise? They make enough noise for ten."

"What do you think we should do about it?" Remo asked.

Chiun snorted. "I think," he said, narrowing his eyes, "that there are some details which even a worthless pupil can attend to without constantly annoying the Master of Sinanju."

"Sorry, just checking."

"Check in silence," Chiun said, going back to his poem.

Remo went out into the corridor to walk next door to the room the two men were entering.

As he did, Anselmo and Myron threw their bulk against the connecting door between the offices and with a crash of splintering wood staggered into the room.

Chiun rolled his eyes and set down his quill deliberately.

Anselmo roared at him, "Where's the other one?"

"God only knows," Chiun said with disgust. "Probably at the front doorway inviting passersby to come in and disturb me."

"This is the one that was writing on the wallpaper," Myron said. "See? There." He pointed to the parchment.

"Hi, guys," said Remo as he bounded back into the room through the hole they had just made in the wall.

"And this is the one that was jumping around like an acreebat," Myron said.

"What can we do for you?" Remo asked pleasantly.

"Nothing," Anselmo said. "We brung you a present." He put the cube covered by the handkerchief down on the laboratory table.

"Good, a present. I love presents," Remo said.

"A fagola," Anselmo said to Myron.

"Can I peek?" Remo asked.

"Definitely a fagola," Myron said.

Remo lifted the handkerchief's corner and peeked inside.

"How sweet of you. It's a fly. Chiun, it's a fly. I never got a fly before."

"You got one now," Anselmo said.

"Anything else you need from us?" Remo asked.

"No. That was it."

"Good," Chiun said. "Then remove your big hulks from this room so I may continue my work."

"Hey, who pulled his chain?" Anselmo said.

"He's writing a poem," Remo explained. "He doesn't like to be disturbed."

"He doesn't, huh? Well, let's see how he likes this." Anselmo stomped across the room, then planted a huge foot atop Chiun's parchment scroll and flattened it, leaving a tread mark.

"You've made him mad now," Remo said. He mumbled to Chiun in Korean.

"Hey. What'd you say to him?" Anselmo asked.

"I asked him not to kill you yet."

"Hahahahaha," Anselmo chuckled. "That's a rich one. Why not yet?"

"Because I want to ask you some questions first," Remo said.

"Oh, no," Myron interrupted. "No questions."

"You mean you were just told to deliver the fly and then leave?" Remo asked.

"That's right," Anselmo said.

"Don't go telling him stuff like that," Myron said. "It ain't none of his business."

"You weren't told to kill us?" Remo said. "Perriweather didn't tell you to kill us?"

"No. Just deliver the fly," Anselmo said.

"Boy, are you stupid," Myron said. "He was just guessing that it was Perriweather and now you told him it was."

"You're pretty smart for a dumbbell," Remo told Myron. "You've got real promise. Where's Perriweather now?"

"My lips are sealed," Myron said.

"How about you?" Remo said, turning to Anselmo. Before Anselmo could answer, Chiun said, "Remo, I wish you would conduct this conversation somewhere else. However, for disturbing my scroll, the ugly one belongs to me."

"Ugly one? Ugly one?" Anselmo shouted. "Is he talking about me?" he demanded of Remo.

Remo looked at Myron, then glanced at himself in a mirror. " 'Ugly one' sure sounds like you," he said.

"I'll deal with you next," Anselmo said. He stomped over to Chiun, who seemed to rise from the floor like a puff of smoke from a dying fire.

"You gotta learn, old man, not to go insulting people."

"Your face insults people," Chiun said.

Anselmo growled, drew back a big fist, and cocked it menacingly.

"Hey, Anselmo. Leave the old guy alone," Myron said.

"Good move, Myron," Remo said.

"Screw him," said Anselmo. He started the fist forward toward Chiun's frail delicate face. It never reached the target.

First Anselmo felt himself being lifted silently upward. If he didn't know better, he would have sworn the old gook was lifting him, but he had no time to think about that, because as he descended he felt something ram into his kidneys, turning them into jelly. He wanted to howl, but something that felt like a cinder block severed his windpipe in one swat. Anselmo tried to gasp for air, as he realized that his bones were somehow being mashed. His eyes were still open and he saw his trousers being tied into a knot, and with numb shock he realized that his legs were still inside them. Inside his chest was a terrible pain. Anselmo thought he must be having a heart attack. It felt as if a powerful hand were clasping at the pumping organ inside his chest, squeezing the life from it. Then he saw that there was a frail yellow hand doing just that. He went into the void slowly, screaming noiselessly about a grave injustice that had been done to him, because he understood in the moment of his death that Waldron Perriweather had, all along, known he was going to die, and had planned it that way.

"Good-bye, Anselmo," Remo said. He turned back to Myron. "Where's Perriweather?" he asked. Myron looked in shock at Anselmo's body, lumped on the floor, then looked back at Remo.

"He was in the Plaza in New York," Myron said.

"And all he wanted was this fly delivered?" Remo said.

"That's right."

"Remo, that one tried to be kind to me," Chiun said. "Return the favor."

"I will, Little Father. Good-bye, Myron," Rerno said.

The big man didn't feel a thing.

"Kind of overdid it, didn't you?" Remo said, looking at the human pretzel that had been Anselmo Bossiloni.

"Do not speak to me," Chiun said, turning his back on Remo. He picked up the flattened piece of parchment and brushed heel marks from it. "All I ask is for quiet and all I get is aggravation and conversation. Dull conversation."

"Sorry, Chiun. I had questions to ask."

Chiun again rose to his feet. "It is obvious that as long as you live I will get no peace."

He walked across the room toward the laboratory table.

"I wanted to know what the fly was about," Remo said.

"It's from Perriweather, it must mean something." Chiun was peeking under the handkerchief at the cube.

"The fly," Remo said. "It's got to be the key."

"Find another key," Chiun said, plunking the cube into a wastebasket.

"What do you mean? What'd you do that for?"

"Because this fly is dead," Chiun said and walked from the room.

Chapter 19

They were in the basement room in Folcroft Sanitarium, where a small laboratory had been set up by Smith for Barry Schweid. Through the walls, Remo could hear the faint hum of the cooling system in the rooms that housed Folcroft's giant computers.

Chiun made it a point to keep his back to Remo and Remo just sighed and folded his arms and pretended to look interested in what Barry Schweid was doing.

The little fat man was in his glory. He pranced around the black lab table and whooped. He gestured ecstatically toward the dissected speck beneath his powerful microscope.

"It's fantastic, I tell you. Fantastic," Barry squealed in his perennially adolescent soprano. "You say somebody just gave you this."

"Just like Santa Claus," Remo said.

"Amazing," Barry said. "That someone would give a perfect stranger a gift of this magnitude."

Chiun snorted. "Not perfect," he said. "This pale piece of pig's ear is many things, but perfect anything is not one of them."

"Actually," Remo said, "I think they were trying to kill us."

"This fly couldn't kill directly. It's been bred to function as a catalyst," Schweid said.

"Oh. Well, that explains everything," Remo said. "Of course."

"Why is this idiot talking about caterpillars?" Chiun mumbled under his breath in Korean. "Flies, caterpillars, I am tired of bugs."

"No," Schweid said to Remo. "The fly has no strength of its own. But . . . well, it was all in Dexter Morley's notes. Unlike ordinary houseflies, this one can bite. And its bite does something to the host body."

"The bitee?" Remo said.

"Right. It puts him into a plane with cosmic curves to which the body is not usually attuned," Schweid said.

"Say what?" Remo said.

"It's simple really. Take an ant."

"Now ants," Chiun grumbled in English.

"Can't we just talk about flies?" Remo asked Barry.

"The ant is a better example. An ant can carry hundreds of times its own weight. How do you think it can do that?"

"Chiun does it all the time," Remo said. "He has me carry everything."

"Silence, imbecile," Chiun barked. "Breathing," he said to Barry matter-of-factly. "It is the basic principle of Sinanju. The breath is at the core of being."

"Chiun, we're talking about ants," Remo said. "Not philosophy."

"But he's right," Schweid said.

"Of course," Chiun said.

"Their bodily systems are capable of refracting cosmic curves of energy in such a way that their strength is completely disproportionate to their body mass. Actually, any species could achieve this strength, if it could muster the concentration for it," Schweid said. "It's just that ants don't have to concentrate. It happens naturally for them."

"You say any species could do this?" Remo said. "Could you?"

"I think so, if I could concentrate." His apple cheeks beamed. "But it'll need Blankey." He picked up the ragged blue blanket and tossed it around his shoulders like a warrior's cloak, then looked into space.

"I'm going to try to concentrate on the cosmic curves in this room," Barry said, "and make myself one with them." He took a deep breath, then another, and another. His eyes glazed. He stood stock-still for several minutes, gazing into nothingness, breathing like a locomotive.

Remo yawned and drummed his fingers on his forearm.

"Is this almost a wrap?" he asked.

"Silence," Chiun hissed.

"Oh, you can't be serious," Remo began, but Chiun silenced him with a glance that would crack granite. After a few moments more, Barry raised his head, a look of exultation in his eyes. Tentatively he reached out with one hand to grasp the leg of the laboratory table.

"Come on," Remo.said. "That's got to weigh three hundred pounds."

Barry looked toward a wall, and the table lifted an inch off the ground.

Remo gaped as Barry lifted the table another inch, then another. The face of the fat little man in the baby blanket showed no strain or effort, only innocent rapture. He raised the table to eye level, his arm fully outstretched, then slowly lowered it. Not one item on the table had moved, not so much as a red wing from the dissected fly. Barry set the table down without a sound.

"Excellent," Chiun said.

"I can't believe it," Remo said.

"I can," Chiun said. He turned to Barry. "I have been looking for a pupil. Would you be willing to wear a kimono?" Before Barry could answer, Chiun said, "You would make a fine pupil. We could begin today with the tigers' paws exercises."

"Will you cut it?" Remo groused. "Whatever this guy discovered, it's not Sinanju."

"Jealousy for the accomplishment of others does not become one who refuses to make the effort to accomplish himself," Chiun intoned.

"Who's jealous? I'm not jealous. It was a fluke. And I'm not wearing any kimono." He turned to Barry. "What has this got to do with the fly?"

"The fly imparts that strength without the concentration," Barry said, rubbing his cheek on the blanket.

"So those two people in the house . . ."

"Exactly," Schweid said. "You said they were like animals. They were. They were stung by one of these flies."

Remo turned to Chiun. "And Dr. Ravits' cat was probably bitten by a fly too. That's how he was able to tear Ravits apart."

Chiun was silent. He was staring at Barry Schweid, holding his hands up in front of his eyes, framing the young man as if measuring him.

"You have a little too much suet on you," Chiun told him. "But we'll take that off you. And the kimono is a wonderful garment for hiding hideous white fat, even though some hideous white people refuse to understand that."

"I'm not wearing any kimono," Remo said.

* * *

In the office directly above them, Harold Smith glanced at the bank of cigarette-pack-size television monitors mounted on his desk. They were kept on all the while Smith was in the office, turned to the three major networks and a twenty-four-hour news channel.

Smith glanced up from some papers on his desk and saw one man's face filling the screen on all four channels. He would have regarded it as odd had he not recognized the man as Waldron Perriweather III. Smith turned up the sound and heard Perriweather's droning hum of a voice.

"This is my demand of you, killers of the universe. All murder of insects is to stop immediately. I repeat, immediately. This will be augmented by providing insect breeding grounds in all possible locations, in order to make up for a consistent pattern of past prejudice against these noble creatures. Garbage and refuse are to be collected and assembled outside all human dwellings immediately. Garbage-can lids will no longer be permitted to be used. I hope this is all quite clear." Perriweather gazed coldly into the camera.

"If implementation of this demand is not begun within twenty-four hours, I will release Musca perriweatheralis. Its vengeance will be merciless. I have explained what this insect is capable of doing. I will not provide a demonstration for your edification, but those of you who do not believe need only ignore my warning and you will see the power of this noble insect soon enough. Unless there is complete capitulation to my demands, one nation at a time will be destroyed. Destroyed, utterly and completely, with no hope for renewal within your lifetimes. And once the action begins, it cannot be reversed. Nor can any of your puny measures prevent it. Nothing can prevent it."

Perriweather cleared his throat and it appeared that there were tears in his eyes.

He said, "We do not ask the destruction of your species, nor your removal from the earth. We ask only to coexist with you, as it was in olden times, when man was but a small link in a natural ecological chain. That was as it should be. That is how it will be again. Good night, ladies and gentlemen, you fiends of the world."

Perriweather's face was replaced by four newscasters. They all said basically the same thing: That scientists interviewed had said that Perriweather, while wealthy, was a crank with no scientific credibility.

Smith turned off the television and sat in silence for several moments. Finally he pressed a button that rang a telephone in Barry Schweid's makeshift lab.

"Come up here, all of you," Smith said.

"I don't think he's a crank at all," Barry Sehweid told Smith after the CURE director had told them of the television ultimatum.

"Why do you say that?" Smith asked calmly.

"All right. Take it in order. We have Dexter Morley's papers. What they tell us is that when he went to work for Perriweather, Perriweather had already created a superfly. First, it could bite; second, the animals that it bit became super-strong and crazy violent.

"Ravits' cat was bitten and acted that way. The chimpanzees in Uwenda tore people apart. They were probably bitten. And it works on human beings. Mr. Chiun and Mr. Remo saw that at the Perriweather mansion when they were attacked by those two people. They had probably been bitten. So the fly exists and it was already a danger."

He looked around at the other three men, unaccustomed to keeping anyone's attention for so long. "And now it's worse," he continued. "This redwinged fly is what Morley was working on, and he changed the fly so it can't be killed. Not by DDT or any kind of poison. It's impervious to all those poisons."

"You could still swat them," Remo said.

"It would take a lot of flyswatters," Barry said. "No. I don't think Perriweather is crazy or that he is bluffing. I think he intends to do just what he said."

"Hold on. If this fly is so indestructible, why'd it die before it hit Chiun and me?" Remo asked.

Barry shrugged. "I don't know. It may just have been a defective fly."

"Maybe they're all defective," Remo said.

"That's a big 'maybe' for mankind to hope to live by," Barry Schweid said.

Smith nodded. "Then it's clear. We have to stop Perriweather. If he releases these red-winged flies anywhere, he'll create maniacs, stronger than human."

"About nineteen times stronger than human," Schweid said. "According to my calculations. And don't forget. According to Morley, these flies can breed. They're not sterile. That means a new generation of them every twenty days or so."

"Like white people," Chiun muttered.

"So the question is, where would Perriweather strike?" Smith said.

"He might try a place where the insect population might be somewhat low but there are large clusters of people, targets for the insects. That's a possibility," Barry said. "Maybe," he added weakly.

"And maybe he has a score to settle," Remo said.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Smith said.

"Uwenda. He went batshit when we got rid of all those beetles there. And if Barry here is right, it's got a low insect population," Remo said.

"I think you're right," Smith said. "It's going to be difficult to get into Uwenda though."

"Why's that?"

"Since the anti-American flap over the beetle business, Uwenda has closed its borders to all Westerners."

"If we can't get in, Perriweather can't get in," Remo said.

"Barry, will you check the computer?" Smith asked.

"Yes, Harold," Schweid said.

It only took the young man three minutes before he was back in the office. "It's Uwenda," he said.

"How can you be sure?"

"Waldron Perriweather bought an airline ticket to Libya three days ago. The ticket's been used. He went there. Libya flies into Uwenda. Our computer has a Libyan passport issued that identifies Waldron Perriweather as a Libyan national. Uwenda's where he's going."

"Us too," Remo said.

"If we can get you in without trouble," Smith said.

"Who could do that?" Remo asked.

"Ndo. The head of the HIAEO. He's a big shot there. He could do it. But he wouldn't. He's on an anti-American, antiscientific rampage."

"He could be persuaded," Chiun said.

"How?" Smith asked.

"This is negotiable information," Chiun said, casting a glance at Remo.

"All right, Chiun," said Remo with a sigh. "I'll wear the damned thing. I'll put on that stupid kimono. Once, just once."

"I accept your good-faith promise," Chiun said as he walked from the office.

"Where is he going?" Smith asked.

"Don't ask," Remo said.

Director General Ndo was in his office, shining the wooden god Ga with grease from his own nose. There was a scream in an outer office, followed by a thump.

Chiun entered the office and with a sinking sensation Ndo looked past him to see his bodyguards lying in a heap in the reception area.

Ndo said only one word. "Again?" Chiun nodded.

Like a beaten man, the director general packed Ga into his vest pocket, picked up a briefcase, and followed the Korean outside, in the direction of the airport.

Chapter 20

It was a typical summer day in Uwenda, sweltering and fetid at daybreak and growing even hotter as the day wore on.

A bandstand had been erected in the square of Ndo's home village. The square itself was little more than a brown patch of trampled earth where the town's one public facility-a well once dug by a group of American volunteer students and now a monument-stood. Shortly after the American students left, the well had been poisoned by Ndo's brother, the military commander in chief, who mistook it for a community urinal, a mistake repeated innumerable times by the soldiers of his army. Another villager decided that the well's pump, once decorated with colorful grasses and rings of red pain, would make an excellent African artifact and sold it to a prominent European collector of primitive art.

Now the well sat unused and stinking, but the site was still where visiting dignitaries chose to speak as they incited the villagers to rise and to protect against Western imperialism.

When their motorcade arrived in the village, Ndo left the car and began talking to members of his native tribe.

Minutes later, he returned to the car and said to Smith, "You seek a white man?"

Smith nodded curtly.

"He is here," Ndo said. "A man arrived last night and has been seen driving throughout the area."

Remo looked through the car window with disgust. "Great. How are we going to find anybody in this barren waste? He could be anywhere. It was a stupid idea to come here in the first place."

"Then we can all return to New York?" Ndo said, ready to give a signal to his chauffeur to turn the car around.

"Not so quickly," Smith said. "The man we seek wants people. I think we should put a lot of people together in one place for him."

"Do you want to give away money?" Ndo said. "That always draws a crowd."

"Too obvious a trap," Smith said. "Well, then how do we attract people?"

"Think of something," Remo said. "You're the politician."

"I know," Ndo said, looking at Chiun for approval. The old Korean's face was turned from him, however, staring out at the long bleak landscape. "I will give a speech."

"Keep it short," Remo grumbled.

The bandstand was hastily constructed from stone and wood once used to store grain, another imperialist ploy to entice the citizens of Uwenda into an alliance with the warmongering West. It was decorated with the latest flag of Uwenda, a pink-and-black-striped field on which three seersucker lions leapt. Ndo's aunt, official flagmaker to the President for Eternity, had barely had time to cut the lions out of the old dress used for flagmaking and to paste them on the flag with Super Glue before the speeches were to begin. Villagers were rounded up at bayonet point and herded into the square.

When Amabasa Francois Ndo approached the speaker's stand, there was not a sound, not a ripple of applause, until the soldiers who ringed the square clicked off the safeties on their rifles. Suddenly the crowd went wild greeting the ambassador.

Ndo waved his hands in the air and grinned. His teeth sparkled in the brilliant sun.

"My people," he began.

There was no applause. He stopped, put his hands on his hips and glared at the General for Life, his brother, who snapped a command to the troops. The troops dropped to their knees in firing position, their weapons pointed at the crowd. A deafening roar of approval for Ndo went up from the throats of the crowd.

Ndo smiled and waved down the applause cheerfully.

"My friends. Four score and seven years ago . . ." In the back of the crowd, Remo glanced at Smith. " 'The Gettysburg Address'?" Remo said.

"You warned him no anti-American stuff," Smith said. "Maybe this is the only other thing he knows."

" . . . dedicated to the proposition that all men . . ." Remo's eyes continued to patrol the area around the village square. Then he saw it-a jeep that had just stopped behind one of the small tarpaper-and-wood shacks that constituted the village's residential area. He began to move away from Smith, but the CURE director restrained him by grabbing his arm. "Look," Smith said, turning Remo's glance to the speaker's platform.

" . . . in a great civil war testing whether that nation or-" Ndo stopped speaking and swatted at a fly buzzing around his face. The sudden silence convinced the villagers that the speech was over. Unprompted by the soldiers' guns, they gave out one perfunctory cheer and began to turn back to their homes.

"Damned fly," Ndo shouted, slapping his fat little fists together.

No one saw the red-winged fly bite Ndo on the back of his glistening neck, but everyone stopped when he suddenly roared in anguish.

They turned to see Ndo, his hands balled into fists, crumpling the pages of his speech. He tossed the pages into the air, then spun in a circle, before beginning to flail about him on the bandstand.

He grabbed the pole holding the Uwendan flag and snapped it in two. Then he shoved the flag itself into his mouth and tore it to shreds with his teeth.

He jumped to the ground, grabbed a support base of the bandstand and shook it until the middle section of timber came loose in his hand. He crushed the wood to powder and the bandstand creaked and then collapsed around him.

The crowd watched for a moment, hushed, and then Ndo rose from the wreckage like some giant primordial beast climbing out of the slime, his throat emitting a sound that no human should have been capable of making.

The villagers, used to Ndo's long boring speeches about Marxism, jumped up and down in glee and began to applaud.

"Musca perriweatheralis," Barry Sehweid said excitedly. "Perriweather's here. He's released the fly. Do you hear, Harold? He's here."

"Didn't even give us the full forty-eight hours," Smith said. The CURE director looked to both sides. Remo and Chiun had moved away from him and were walking slowly toward Ndo.

The IHAEO official's brother approached the bandstand. He extended a helping hand to Ndo.

Ndo seemed to smile, then as the man moved within the reach of his arm, he swung his arm around in one long sweep and cracked his fist against the side of his brother's face.

Like a brown ball, the general's head bounded off his shoulders, bouncing through the dust toward the community well.

A villager screamed. Then another. The soldiers started to raise their weapons toward Ndo, but it was too late. The politician grabbed one of the riflemen, impaled him on his own weapon, and then spun the soldier around over his head.

He roared a growl as blood sprayed from the man, sending up little puffs of dust where it hit the sunbaked ground.

"Naaaaargh," Ndo roared, his eyes bulging wildly from his head.

"He says 'Naaaaaargh' too, Little Father," Remo said. "Maybe that's how we'll be able to tell whoever gets bit. He'll say 'Naaaaaargh.' "

"Good thought," Chiun said.

The villagers bolted and ran. They brushed past Remo and Chiun, as Ndo held the dead soldier over his head, and then tossed him, as if he were a light stick, into the midst of the other soldiers.

The Uwendan Army dropped its rifles and ran, and suddenly almost as if by magic, the square was empty of people, except for Remo, Chiun and Smith at one end, and at the other ... Smith's heart sank.

Barry Schweid was standing near Ndo, slowly waving his blanket. The pudgy young man's eyes were glazed. Ndo looked toward him and his lips curled back in a savage parody of a smile. The fluttering blue blanket in Barry's hands caught his attention. Like a bull in an arena, Ndo charged it.

Remo and Chiun started forward but Barry shouted to them.

"No closer," he said. "I can handle this."

His body seemed to grow rigid and then his eyes apparently lost their focus and gazed off into a distance no one could see.

"Remo, Chiun. Help him," Smith snapped.

Remo ignored him. "He's doing that thing again," he said to Chiun. "The cosmic-power thing."

Chiun merely watched the battle unfolding before him.

As Ndo reached Barry and stretched his arms out to encircle him, Barry darted low, under the arms, stuck out his foot and sent the IHAEO officer sprawling on the ground. He thumped Ndo on the side of the head with one chubby fist.

"Dammit if that kid's not all right," Remo said. "Instant Sinanju."

"There is no instant Sinanju," Chiuri said and moved forward toward Barry.

Ndo was on his feet again, circling around Barry. The little fat man had dropped the blue blanket as he turned, keeping his face toward Ndo.

Then, almost visibly, the strength seemed to drain from him. He was staring at the ground where Ndo's stomping feet had stepped on the blanket.

The young man paused. Chiun called out, "Here. Ndo. Here." But before Ndo could move, Barry dove forward to the ground to try to pick up ... what?

"He's going for that damned blanket," Remo snarled.

Chiun ran forward to stop him but he was too late. One blow was enough. Ndo caught Barry between the shoulder blades with a powerful down-crashing fist and broke the young scientist's back with a sound like the snap of a dry twig. Barry dropped into the dust as if all the bones in his body had suddenly vanished.

He seemed to try to crawl forward a few inches. His hand dug into the dust. And then his face thunked down onto the ground.

Chiun was on Ndo, his arms and legs invisible inside the kimono he wore, the flowing and swirling of the garment making his movements look gentle and almost slow. But there were the sounds. The thud and thud of blows to Ndo, the crack and crack as bones snapped, and then the African lay in a heap, his sightless eyes staring upward at the sun, his hands twitching in the final reflex of death.

Remo bent over to Barry as Smith ran up to them. "Why did you stop, kid?" Remo asked. "You had him and then you stopped."

Chiun knelt on the other side of Barry Schweid, who offered a pained little grin.

He opened the palm of his hand. Inside was trapped a red-winged fly. The insect was not moving.

"I saw this on the ground near Ndo. I jumped to catch it so it wouldn't get away and bite anybody else. Wasted my time," Barry said. "It was already dead."

"We're going to get you to a hospital," Smith said. He knelt in the dust alongside Barry's head.

Barry shook his head weakly: "I don't think so," he said. "Death is something tangible, something you can feel. Did you know that?" he asked, his scholar's mind still fascinated by the workings of his own organism, even in its last moments of life. "Will you write that down somewhere?"

Smith nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and Remo said, "Where does it hurt, kid? I can take the pain away." He realized that it was death he could not conquer.

"It doesn't hurt anymore. Not at all." He glanced toward Chiun and smiled again. "You understood what I was doing. It was the same thing I did in the lab, harnessing the cosmic energy. The same thing you do with the breathing. I had it, but then when I went for the fly, I lost it. Why'd that happen?"

"I do not know, my son," Chiun said.

"You said it was breathing. I was breathing right," Barry said. He closed his eyes for a moment in a wince of pain, then opened them again, searching Chiun's face for an answer.

"You breathed correctly," Chiun said softly. "But breathing is only one part of it. You did not have the training to sustain it. The power comes from the breathing. That is correct. But keeping that power comes from training, from knowing you have that power and that you can use it." He held both hands over his chest. "It comes from in here. But not from the lungs, from inside the heart. And from here." He raised his hands to touch his forehead. "Tell me. Was there not a moment when you worried that the power would leave you?"

Barry tried to nod and grimaced with the pain. "When I saw the fly. I wondered if I would be fast enough or strong enough to get it."

"That was the moment of your weakness," Chiun said. "In that moment, when first you doubted it, the power left you."

"I was so close," Barry said.

"You would have been a fine pupil," Chiun said. "You had wisdom and courage. You lacked only the confidence of knowing you could do it. That is the true secret of Sinanju: that a man can overcome any obstacle if he knows in his heart that he must and in his mind that he can," Chiun said.

"You think I could have been a good student?" Barry asked.

"Yes," Chiun said. "You would have been my best."

"Thank you," said Sehweid. His eyes rolled up in his head and he saw Smith kneeling behind him. "Thank you, Harold, for everything."

"And thank you, Barry."

"You're the closest thing I ever had to a friend, Harold."

"I feel that way too, Barry," Smith said.

Barry Schweid smiled once and died. Forgotten in the courageous moments of his final battle and death was the little piece of blue blanket which lay in the Uwendan dust.

Schweid's body was in the rear seat of the limousine that had belonged to Amabasa Francois Ndo.

"The jeep's gone," Remo said. "No telling where Perriweather is now. Do you think he's got more flies?"

Smith nodded. "He must have. Many more. I'm sure they've bred by now. He's got enough to carry out his threat."

"Then we've lost," Remo said.

"It looks that way," Smith said.

"I'm sorry," Remo said. "He could be anywhere by now."

"I know."

"Chiun and I will stay around to look for him, but I wouldn't hold out too much hope if I were you."

"I won't," Smith said. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to take Barry's body to the American embassy near the airport. They can arrange to ship it home. We'll bury him back in the States."

"That's a good idea," Remo said.

Smith nodded and stepped into the car. "Good-bye, Master of Sinanju," he said. "Goodbye, Remo."

"Good-bye," Remo said.

Chiun was silent as Smith drove away.

Chapter 21

"Well, if the world's all going back to the Stone Age, this is a good place to be, I guess," said Remo.

"How quick you white things are to surrender," Chiun said.

"Perriweather could be miles away by now," Remo said.

"He could be," Chiun said. "And he might be close by. Should one give up without considering the possibility?"

"All right. We'll keep following the jeep tracks," Remo said without conviction. They were moving along a narrow path through the brush, just wide enough to accommodate Perriweather's vehicle.

"And what of the curious condition of the red-winged fly?" Chiun said over his shoulder, without turning, as he continued to race along the path.

"What curious condition? The fly's dead," Remo said.

"That is its curious condition," Chiun said.

"If you say so, Little Father," said Remo, who had no idea what Chiun was talking about.

"Silence," Chiun commanded. "Do you hear it?" Remo listened but heard nothing. He looked back toward Chiun, but the old Korean was no longer there. Remo looked up and saw Chiun skittering up the side of a tall tree, as quickly as a squirrel: The Master of Sinanju paused for a moment at the top, then slid down smoothly. As he reached the ground, Remo heard the sound. It was an automobile engine.

Chiun ran off through the brush with Remo following.

"You saw him?" Remo said.

"He is over there." Chiun waved vaguely in the direction they were running. "The dirt road must curl around through the jungle and joins with another road ahead. We can reach him."

"Little Father?" Remo said.

"What, talkative one?"

"Keep running."

The road curved around a small hillock and then passed through a dry dusty clearing.

Remo and Chiun stood in the clearing as Perriweather's jeep spun around the corner from the hill. The man screeched on his brakes and stopped the car with a skid.

Even in the bright African sun, Perriweather looked cool and dignified. His hair was unmussed. He wore a tailored khaki bush suit, but even at the distance of twenty feet, Remo could see that the man's fingernails were dirty.

"Mr. Perriweather, I presume," Remo said.

"Drs. Remo and Chiun. How nice to see you here," Perriweather called out.

Remo took a step forward toward the jeep but stopped as Perriweather raised something in his hand. It was a small crystalline cube. Inside it, Remo could see a black dot. And the dot was moving. And it had red wings.

"Is this what you're looking for?" Perriweather asked.

"You got it, buddy," Remo said. "Is that your only one?"

"As you say, you've got it, buddy. The only one," Perriweather said.

"Then I want it," Remo said.

"Good. Here. You can have it. Take it."

He tossed the cube high into the air toward Remo. As Remo and Chiun looked skyward toward the descending crystal object, he gunned the jeep forward.

"Many more," he yelled. "Many more." And then his voice broke into a wild laugh.

"I've got it, Little Father," Remo said as the cube dropped toward him.

He reached up and caught the object gently in his hands. But it was not glass or plastic. He felt the spunsugar cube shatter in his hands even as he caught it, and then he felt another sensation. A brief sting in the palm of his right hand.

He opened his hand and looked at it. The welt on his palm grew before his eyes.

"Chiun, I'm bitten," he gasped.

Chiun did not speak. He backed away from Remo, his eyes filled with sorrow.

Fifty feet away, on the other side of the clearing, Perriweather had stopped the jeep and was now standing on the seat, looking back toward them, laughing.

"Isn't life wonderful when you're having fun?" he called.

Remo tried to answer but no sound came from his lips. Then the first spasm hit him.

He had been in pain before. There had been times when he had felt himself dying. But he had never before known the agony of being utterly, unthinkably out of physical control.

As the first seizures engulfed him, he reached automatically for his stomach, where his insides seemed to be riding a roller coaster. His breath came short and shallow, rasping out of his lungs.

The muscle spasms moved to his legs. His thighs twitched and his feet shook. Then his arms, the muscles straining and bulging out of their sheaths as his back knotted in agony. He moved his helpless eyes toward Chiun. The old man made no move toward him, but stood like a statue, his eyes locked into Remo's.

"Chiun," he wanted to say. "Little Father, help me." He opened his mouth but no words came out. Instead, he emitted the sound of a wild beast, a low groan that hissed from his body like an alien thing escaping. The sound frightened Remo. It did not belong to him, just as this body no longer belonged to him. It was a stranger's body. A killer's body.

As he watched the old Korean, he began to drool. The small figure that stood so porcelain perfect before him became an unreal thing, a toy, a focus for the inexplicable rage that was bursting from within every fiber of his new, unfamiliar body.

For a moment, Chiun, Master of Sinanju, teacher and friend, ceased to exist for him. He had been replaced by the frail little creature standing before him.

Remo dropped to his hands and knees and began to crawl across the clearing. In the background, Waldron Perriweather's laugh still boomed through the heavy humid air.

Remo tried to speak. He forced his mouth into the proper shape, then expelled the air from his lungs.

"Go," he managed. He swatted at the air. The next sound that came from him was a roar.

"No," Chiun said simply, over the roar. "I will not run from you. You must turn from me and from the creature that inhabits you."

Remo moved closer, fighting himself every inch, but unable to stop. Froth bubbled from his mouth. The pupils of his eyes were tinged with red.

The eyes again met Chiun's, closer now, almost within reach.

"You are a Master of Sinanju," Chiun said. "Fight this thing with your mind. Your mind must know that you are master of your body. Fight it."

Remo rolled onto his side to stop his forward motion toward Chiun. He clutched himself in torment. "Can't fight," he managed to gasp.

"Then kill me, Remo," Chiun said. He spread his arms and lifted his neck. "I wait."

Remo rolled back onto his knees, then lunged at Chiun. The old man made no move to step out of his way.

You are a Master of Sinanju.

The words echoed somewhere deep inside him. And in the deepest spot of himself, he knew that he was a man, not some laboratory experiment with no will. He was a man, and more than a man, for Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, had taught him to be more, to see the wind and taste the air and move with the vibrations of the universe. Chiun had trained Remo to be a Master, and a Master did not run, not even from himself.

With a colossal effort of will, Remo swerved from his path. He had come so close to the old man that the silk of Chiun's kimono brushed his bare arm. Tears streamed down his cheeks as the part of him that was Rerno struggled and clawed and fought with the beast that surrounded him. Shrieking, he threw himself on a boulder and wrapped his arms around it.

"I ... will ... not ... kill ... Chiun," he groaned, squeezing the rock with every particle of his strength. He felt the lifeless mass in his arms warm, then tremble. Then, with an outrush of air, expelling the poison from his lungs with a final, terrible effort, he clutched the boulder with his convulsive bleeding hands and pressed himself against it one last time.

The rock snapped, exploding in a spray. Pebbles and sand shot high into the air over him.

When the dust had settled, Remo stood. Like a man.

Chiun did not speak. His head nodded once in acknowledgment and it was enough.

Remo ran across the clearing. Perriweather's laugh stopped short and Remo heard the metal protest as the jeep was forced into gear and started to drive away.

Remo ran, feeling the perfect synchronization of his body as it responded to the subtle commands of his mind.

The jeep puttered ahead of him at a distance, moving easily over the dirt road.

And then it stopped.

Perriweather pressed down on the gas pedal. The wheels whirred and spun but the vehicle did not move. As Perriweather turned and saw Remo's hand holding the back of the vehicle, his jaw dropped open. He tried to speak.

"Fly got your tongue?" Remo said and then the jeep's rear end was rising into the air, and then it spun over and plummeted off the side of the road, down a hill, turning in the air, bursting into flames.

It stopped, flaming, as it crashed into an outcropping of rock.

"That's the biz, sweetheart," Remo said coldly. He felt Chiun standing alongside him.

"He is dead?" Chiun said.

"He should already be in fly heaven," Remo said. They watched the flames for a moment; and then Remo felt Chiun's body next to his tense and stiffen. Remo himself groaned as he saw what had captured Chiun's attention.

A small swirl of insects rose in the air from the burning jeep. In the harsh sunlight, their wings glinted a blood red.

"Oh, no," Remo said. "There's more. And they've escaped." He looked at Chiun. "What can we do?"

"We can stand here," Chiun said. "They will find us."

"And then what? Let ourselves get eaten up by flies?"

"How little you understand about things," Chiun said.

The red-winged flies were blown high into the air on the rising gusts of superheated air from the burning jeep. Then they seemed to see Remo and Chiun because they flew toward them.

"What should we do, Little Father?" Remo asked.

"Stand here to attract them. But do not let them bite you."

The flies, perhaps a dozen of them, flew in lazy circles around the two men. Occasionally one would dip as if to land but a sudden movement of Remo and Chiun's bodies frightened them back into the air.

"This is great until we get tired of waving at bugs," Remo said.

"Not much longer," Chiun said. "Look at the circles they are making."

Remo glanced upward. The hovering circles were becoming more erratic. The sound of the flies had changed too; it was uneven and too loud.

Then one by one the flies buzzed frantically, dove, struggled for a moment in the air, then dove again. They fell on the ground, around the two men, each twitching for a moment, before stopping as if frozen. "They're dead," Remo said in wonderment.

Chiun had plucked up a leaf and was folding it into an origami box. Inside he put the bodies of the dead flies.

"For Smith," he explained.

"Why'd they die?" Remo said.

"It was air," Chiun said. "They were bred to live in poison but they lost their ability to live for long in the air we breathe. It was why that fly died in the laboratory. And why that fly died after biting that poor fat white friend of Smith's." He put the leaf box into a fold of his robe.

"Then we weren't even needed," Remo said. "These monsters would have died by themselves."

"We were needed," Chiun said. He nodded toward the smoldering jeep holding Perriweather's body. "For the other monsters."

Chapter 22

A week later, Smith arrived at their hotel room at the New jersey shore.

"Chiun was right," Smith said without preamble. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "The flies could not live in ordinary air. They lived in Perriweather's lab because the air was so purified and they were mutated to live in poison. But ordinary killed them."

"Ordinary kills a lot of things," Chiun said. "Great teachers are killed by ordinary, or less than ordinary, pupils."

His statement sounded, to Smith, like some sort of private argument between the two men so he just cleared his throat, then pulled a note from his jacket pocket and handed it to Remo.

"This was left for you at the IHAEO labs," he said. Remo glanced at the note. It began, "Darling Remo."

"She says she's gone to the Amazon to try to find new uses for Dr. Ravits' work with pheromones."

"Gee, Smitty, thanks for reading it first. You can imagine all the trouble it saves me if you read my personal mail." He dropped the note in the wastebasket.

"You're not allowed to get personal mail," Smith said. "Anyway, Dara Worthington has been advised that Drs. Remo and Chiun died in a jeep accident in Uwenda."

"I never died," Chiun said.

"Just a polite fiction," Smith explained.

"Oh. I see. A polite fiction, like some people's promises," Chiun said, as he glared at Remo.

"Smitty, you'd better go now," Remo said. "Chiun and I have something to do."

"Can I help?" Smith asked.

"I only wish you could," Remo said with a sigh. Alone in his office, Smith leaned back in his chair. Barry Schweid's blue blanket lay over an arm of the chair alongside the desk. Smith rose, picked up the tattered piece of fabric, and headed for the wastebasket.

If Remo could do it with Dara Worthington's note, so could Smith. There was no room in the organization for sentiment. Smith had dispatched his secretary's son with no more thought than he would have given the passing of a bumblebee. Or a red-winged fly. Barry Schweid was dead and he had been a useless, needy fool. His only contribution had been to make CURE's computers, in the rooms below and the backups on St. Martin, tamper-proof. Apart from that, he had been a troublesome childish pest.

Smith tossed the blanket toward the wastebasket, but somehow clung to the end of it. He felt its torn silky strands hanging on his fingers, almost as if Barry Schweid himself were hanging on to him.

He touched the blanket with his other hand. Barry had found the only comfort of his life in it. His heart felt weighted.

He squeezed the end of the blanket once more, for himself, and once again for Barry, then let it drop. He put on his hat, picked up the attache case containing the portable computer, and walked out.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Mikulka," he said routinely. "Good afternoon, Dr. Smith."

He was halfway out the door when he turned around. Mrs. Mikulka was typing with the ferocious speed that made her such a fine secretary. Her bifocals were perched on the end of her nose. Funny, he thought. He had never noticed before that she wore eyeglasses. There were so many things he never noticed.

The woman looked up, startled to see Smith still standing there. She removed her eyeglasses, looking uncomfortable.

"Is there anything else, Doctor?"

He stepped foward a pace, still marveling at what his secretary of almost twenty years looked like.

"Do you have any children, Mrs. Mikulka?" he said.

"Besides Keenan?" she asked.

"Yes. Of course. Besides Keenan."

"Yes. I have a daughter who's married and living in Idaho and two more sons. One's an engineer and one's going to become a priest."

Her bosom seemed to puff out slightly while she spoke and her eyes shone with pride.

"I'm glad, Mrs. Mikulka," Smith said. "It sounds like a fine family."

She smiled. Smith tipped his hat and left.

"I am waiting," Chiun announced from outside the bathroom door.

"Hold your horses, will you? This thing's as tight as the skin on a turnip."

"It is an excellent kimono," Chiun said.

"Yeah, sure."

"And you are wearing it to the dining room for dinner," Chiun said.

"That was my promise," Remo said. "And I always keep my promises."

Chiun chuckled. "Remo, I have waited years for this moment. I want you to know that you have brought sunshine into the twilight of my life."

"And all it cost me was the blood circulation in my arms and legs. Great," Remo said.

The bathroom door swung open and Remo stalked out.

Chiun staggered back across the room in disbelief. His tiny silk kimono, hand-painted with purple birds and magnolia blossoms, covered Remo only up to midthigh. Remo's arms stuck out of the sleeves from the elbow down. His shoulders stretched the thin fabric to the breaking point. The collar opening, neat and taut around Chiun's small neck, jutted open on Remo almost to his navel. Remo was barefoot. His knees shone white next to the smooth colors of the garment: "You look like an idiot," Chiun said.

"I told you I would."

"You look like that impertinent creature who sings about the good ship Lollipop. "

"Tell me about it," Remo growled.

"I will go no place with you looking like such an imbecile."

Remo hesitated. It was an opening. "Oh, no," he said. "A deal's a deal. I promised you I would wear this and I'm wearing it to dinner. That's it, case closed."

"Not with me, you're not," Chiun said.

"Oh yes, I am. And if anybody laughs, they're dead." He walked toward the door of their room. "Let's go," he said.

Chiun stepped alongside him. "All right," he said reluctantly. "If you insist."

But at the doorway Chiun stopped. "Hold," he shouted. "What is that smell?"

"What smell?" Remo said. "I don't smell anything."

"That smell like a pleasure house. Wait. It comes from you."

Remo bent his head over and sniffed his chest. "Oh, that. I always use that. That's my after-shower splash."

"I did not know they made such things from garlic," Chiun said.

"It's not garlic. It's fresh. Woodsy, kind of. I wear it all the time."

"You wear it all the time when you keep yourself wrapped in clothing. That muffles your odor. But now ... with your skin exposed . . " He pinched his nostrils shut. "It is more than I can bear."

His eyes widened into two hazel marbles.

"Quick. It is befouling my beautiful kimono. Quick, Remove it before the fabric is forever impregnated with that stench."

"You sure you want me to do this, Chiun?" Remo asked.

"Please, Remo. Now. Hurry. Before I expire." Remo walked back into the bathroom. A moment later, he was back wearing his usual black T-shirt, chinos and leather loafers.

"Did you hang my kimono up to air out?" Chiun asked.

"Yes. Can we go and eat now?"

"Yes, if our appetites have not been ruined for all time," Chiun said.

"I'll eat just fine," Remo said with a smile.