Timber Line

Chapter Ten

"I saw it," Harvey Quibble squeaked. "I saw it with my own two eyes." He wheeled toward Remo, who was lounging on one of the chairs in the A-frame. "And you're not going to get away with it. No, sirree. Not as long as my name is Harvey Quibble."

"Will you calm down?" Roger Stacy said. He was standing behind the sofa, facing Quibble. Joey Webb, Pierre LaRue, and Chiun were on the other side of the room, shaking their heads in either disbelief or disgust.

"No, I will not calm down," said Quibble.

"I think if you've got a problem with O'Sylvan here, then you ought to work it out through channels. You're both federal employees," Stacy said, "and to tell the truth, I could do without either of you. Why don't you both hop a plane to Washington and petition the Supreme Court for a hearing?"

"Good idea," said Remo. "Quibble, you go first. I'll catch up with you in a couple of days."

The little mouselike figure jumped up and down in anger. The corner of his left eye began twitching.

"You may all think it's funny," he yelled, "but that person tonight attacked a group of innocent, unarmed, totally peaceful citizens while they were exercising their legitimate rights of free speech, public assembly, and petition and redress. That's what he did."

"How'd he do that?" Stacy asked.

"He threw snowballs at them," Quibble said.

"I threw snowballs at them," Remo agreed.

"Snowballs?" said Stacy.

"From ambush. So that nobody could see him and take his picture," Quibble said. "But I saw him. I, Harvey P. Quibble. And I have to tell you that this has nothing to do with his job description. I thought I had this all worked out, with his new classification and all, but now I see I'm going to have to take sterner measures."

"Cut my pay another seventy-five percent," Remo said.

"Is that all you have to say for yourself?" Stacy asked.

Remo answered in Korean.

Quibble said, "I warned you. What this man does is un-American. He even talks un-American."

"Why don't you translate it for Mr. Quibble?" Stacy asked Remo.

"He wouldn't like it."

"I demand to know what you said," Quibble said.

"It's a Korean proverb," Remo said.

"What does it mean?" asked Quibble.

"It means that the world is filled with people who will look at duck droppings and diamonds and fill their pockets with the duck droppings."

Joey Webb giggled. Pierre LaRue guffawed.

"Well, let me tell you, Mr. Know-it-all with your smart proverbs," sputtered Quibble, "this doesn't end here. I intend to see that you never get through your probationary period with the Forestry Service."

"Good," said Remo. "I miss the New York City subways."

Quibble left, followed a few minutes later by Pierre LaRue. When Stacy said good night, Remo followed him outside.

"Where'd you get that Harvey Quibble?" Remo asked.

Stacy shook his head. "The main company applied for some federal research funds. As soon as they got them, they got Harvey Quibble, too, to make sure that all the federal job regulations were obeyed. The company sent him up here and told me they wouldn't mind if he got lost in a snowdrift."

"He will if he keeps getting in my way," Remo said. "No sign of Oscar Brack?"

"Nothing," said Stacy.

"The reason we broke up that demonstration tonight was because the Mountain Highs were planning to start a forest fire," Remo said.

"Oh," said Stacy thoughtfully.

He rubbed his cheek, and even outdoors Remo noticed he smelled sweet.

"I thought you ought to know so you can keep your guards watching them."

"Good idea," said Stacy.

"The two dead men up at the copa-iba farm?"

"They carried no identification," Stacy said. "The police have taken prints and are trying to find something out through Washington."

"Keep on them," Remo said. "Knowing who they are could clear this up fast." He decided not to mention the dead lumberjack.

"Chances are they're just more Mountain Highs," Stacy said.

"Maybe," said Remo. "But I don't know. Guns wouldn't seem to be their way. Forest fires and marches, yes. But not guns. Not snakes in cars. Not bloody fights with Brack, wherever he is."

"We'll see," Stacy said. "If I hear anything, I'll let you know."

Chiun had decided that as pleasant as sleeping before the fireplace was, the traffic patterns made it impossible for him to get a wink, so he confiscated the floor in Remo's bedroom.

Joey Webb sat down beside Remo on the couch out in the main room. She touched his arm, and Remo felt a pleasantly warm sensation where her hand rested, a feeling that he had not known for a while. "What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"How much I hate women who ask me what I'm thinking about," he said.

"I deserved that," she said. "It's not much of a conversational gambit. I want to know who you are and why you're here."

"Can I sleep first?" Remo asked.

"No."

"You tell me your story, I'll tell you mine," Remo said. Maybe she would talk herself to sleep.

Joey Webb started with her earliest memory — back when she was little more than an infant and her name was Josefina Webenhaus. Of being awakened one steamy jungle night to the sound of someone screaming, of sneaking from her tent to her mother's and seeing some dark figures doing unmentionable things to her. Of finding her father lying dead and headless in his work tent. Of the endless nights of nightmares and eating dirt to try to stay alive. Of being rescued, along with Stacy, by Oscar Brack. Of an endless round of boarding schools and summer camps, punctuated only infrequently by visits from the grim Dr. Smith who had been her father's friend and had taken over responsibility for her upbringing.

She told him more. Of her struggle to get into the Duke University forestry school and how once she had gotten there, her life had blossomed because of a young professor named Danny O'Farrell, whom she had loved and to whom she had given herself. Of how Oscar would visit them both at college and arranged for them to go to work for Tulsa Torrent on her father's copa-iba project.

She spoke of the project. How over the past three years she and Danny and Oscar had searched for a way to grow the Brazilian trees in all but the coldest of U.S. climates. How they were still stumped because the trees couldn't be raised from seedlings anywhere except in the semitropical coasts of the States. How everything just started to go wrong: trees rotting with fungus, equipment breaking down, key people being injured, and reports being lost. How Danny had become frustrated and suspected spies and began to snoop around.

And then he was killed. Joey told Remo how, in complete desperation, she had called Dr. Smith, her old guardian, and asked him for help, and how he said he'd try but she had never heard from him again.

She talked for a half-hour, seemingly without a breath or a pause, then stopped abruptly and said, "That's me. Now you."

Remo thought for a moment of telling her something, anything that might ease her opinion of Smith, the head of CURE and his boss, but decided against it. Smith deserved the grief he got in life.

"Let's just say that maybe somebody you know knows somebody who knows somebody who might have sent somebody like me here to help."

Joey nodded. "I wouldn't be surprised. I used to get the idea that Dr. Smith was an important man."

"Slow down. I never said anything about Harold Smith," Remo said.

"And I never told you that his name was Harold," she said. "So thanks. And thank him, too."

The sound was very quiet, so soft that even as Remo sat there looking at Joey Webb, he wasn't sure he had heard it.

He had almost reached out and touched the girl, almost taken her into his arms out of a sense of personal desire rather than as a matter of duty, when he heard the call and stopped.

"What is it, Remo?"

"Someone's calling my name," he said.

She listened for a moment.

"I don't hear anything," she said. "It must be just the wind. Sometimes it plays tricks on you up here."

Remo listened again. This time the calling was louder. Still below the threshold of hearing of non-Sinanju ears, but louder nevertheless.

"I've got to see what it it," he said, getting up from the couch.

"Don't go out there," she said.

"Why?"

"I've got a feeling," she said.

"I'll be right back," Remo said.

Outside the A-frame, the wind swirled the sound around, through the air, until it seemed to Remo as if it came from everywhere and nowhere.

He started off, over the snow, putting twenty-five yards of distance between himself and the cabin. Then he stopped to listen. The sound was softer than it had been. Wrong direction.

He tried moving toward the right side of the A-frame. Same result.

It was only when he got behind the cabin and took a position twenty-five yards behind it that the swirling, eerie sound seemed to grow a little louder.

"Remo," it hissed. "Remo. Remo. Remo." Over and over, like the soundtrack from a nightmare of horror and death.

He knew the direction the sound came from now, but the gusting, whistling winds still made it difficult to pin down the source.

It was slow work. Five yards forward. Was the sound louder? No? Then back five yards, and move off five yards in another direction. Slowly, he saw that the sound was taking him farther and farther from the A-frame. And still the same single name being called out, over and over: "Remo. Remo. Remo." He was getting close now, close enough to know that the voice was the practiced, whispering hiss of someone, probably a man, trying not to let his voice be recognized.

He looked through the darkness of the night but saw no one. He heard no movement, no unusual sound except his name, muffled, being called again and again.

It was getting much louder now. He knew he should be almost on top of the caller. But still he saw nothing. The sound seemed almost to come from below his feet.

He looked down but before he could inspect the snow he stood on, there was another sound, a strong whooshing sound. He looked up, back across the hundred yards, toward the back of the A-frame.

In horror, he saw flames burst from the rear windows of the A-frame. He started to run, but he had taken only three steps when the cabin lodge exploded before his eyes.

And Joey and Chiun were inside.