Timber Line

Chapter Sixteen

Company guards and the town police arrived just before the disorderly gang of protesters could turn into a surging mob, and slowly herded them back into the protesters' camping grounds.

Arriving with the police was Roger Stacy, who walked away from the mob scene, went through the thin bank of trees, and entered the clearing where Remo was approaching Harvey Quibble.

Quibble saw Stacy approaching, and he pointed a long, tremulous finger at Remo and squeaked, "He did it again. I saw him with my very own two eyes. This... this ersatz tree inspector chased that poor man over the side of the cliff." As Remo drew near, Quibble drew himself up to his full height. "You, sir, are not merely an incompetent," he said, "you are a murderer." He turned to Stacy. "He is, he is," he said.

"Shove it," said Remo.

Stacy looked from Quibble to Remo, from Quibble to Remo, then back to Quibble again.

"I'm sure Mr. O'Sylvan didn't kill anybody," he said. He turned once again to Remo. "Did you?"

Remo said nothing. He saw Chiun approaching from across the road. Behind them, the police were setting up barricades penning in the protesters.

"See," Quibble said. "What did I tell you? He won't even dialog with us. We have no room on the government team for these kind of people... these killers. I don't care how much you may miss him, Mr. Stacy, but after I contact Washington tomorrow, this Remo O'Sylvan is going to be off the job." Quibble puffed out his tiny sparrow's chest.

"I told you, shove it," Remo said. "He was dead before I ever reached him."

"How do you know that?" Stacy said.

"I don't believe it," Quibble said.

"He didn't scream," Remo said. "He went ass over teakettle off the edge of a hundred-foot cliff and he didn't scream. He was either dead or unconscious already."

"Oh," said Stacy.

"You can give that lame excuse to the personnel department," Quibble said, "but my report goes in as I saw it."

The federal job inspector and Stacy began a heated argument and Remo, disgusted, walked over to Chiun. The old man was sniffing the air.

"They're using tear gas," Remo said.

Chiun shook his head. "Not that," he said. "Something else. Something sweet."

As he and Chiun disappeared into the woods, Remo looked back. Stacy and Harvey Quibble were still arguing.

No one challenged Remo and Chiun as they went back to the log cabin. When they went inside, Joey Webb was sitting in front of the fire, reading.

"What happened?" she asked Remo quickly. "Tell me all about it."

"Nothing happened. Where're the guards that were supposed to be here?"

"I don't know," Joey said. "I didn't see any guards."

"I told that horse's ass Stacy to send guards down here," Remo snarled.

"I'm all right. Stop worrying. What happened up there?"

Remo thought of telling her about Cicely Winston-Alright, about Carpathian, and about Pierre LaRue's death earlier in the night; but he decided not to — the girl had had enough to worry about in the past weeks, and the rush of events of the last twenty-four hours might be enough to snap her spirit, no matter how strong.

"Nothing much happened," Remo repeated as he walked to the telephone. "A lot of speeches, yakety-yak, the cops broke up the march, and that was that."

"Oh, you got a phone call," Joey Webb said.

"Who was it?"

"I think it was Dr. Smith. He said you are to call your Aunt Mildred."

"That was Smitty. I don't have an Aunt Mildred," Remo said.

He took the phone with him into the corner of the room and dialed Smith's direct number.

"Yes?" came Smith's voice.

"What was it? You called."

"The two dead men were Rhodesian nationals. They had no history in this country. Salisbury police suspect they might have been contract killers, but there is no firm evidence either way."

Remo nodded. "It's safe to assume that if they were here, they were here working for somebody," he said.

"That's right," Smith said.

"How about the Mountain High Society?" Remo asked.

"I don't know about that," said Smith. "Hiring killers would not seem to be their style. Basically, they have been just another one of hundreds of protest groups. Perhaps a little better financed than most organizations like that, but otherwise not much different."

"How about their leadership? That broad with two names. That little greaseball Carpathian?"

"Both clean," Smith said.

"Both dead, too," Remo said.

"Oh," said Smith.

Quickly Remo told him what had happened, without mentioning Pierre LaRue, trying to keep his voice down so that Joey could not hear him.

"Mrs. Winston-Alright was one of the founders of the society," Smith said. "And until a few years ago, she bankrolled it."

"And then what happened?" Remo asked.

"Her second husband, Lance Alright, left her. He left her penniless. There was a suspicion that he took her money and ran off to indulge in oil speculation. Nothing's been heard of him since."

"She didn't live like she was poor," Remo said.

"I don't know. She had no income. Carpathian drifted into this society right after graduating college. It upset his family, who are wealthy merchants in the Middle East."

"Oil. Middle East," Remo mused aloud. "What about the tape recorder? Anything?"

"A cheap type made by the hundreds of thousands. Most of this particular model was bought up by the federal government for its own use. I'm still trying to track down the specific model."

"Keep in touch," Remo said. He hung up, disappointed. The bodies were piling to the sky, and still there was no hard information, no solid lead. Just a lot of unanswered questions.

He vowed that he would not leave Joey Webb alone or out of his sight, until everything was cleared up.

Remo was wakened by Chiun standing over him.

"What's wrong?" Remo asked; instantly awake.

"The forest is afire," Chiun said.

Remo jumped to his feet. "Those damn Mountain Highs," he snarled as he ran to the front door.

"Perhaps," Chiun said.

The two men went outside. To the north, the hillside was an undulating wall of flame. To the west and east and south, it was the same. The woods were filled with smoke and mist as the fire ate its way down the hillsides toward the valley in which Alpha camp and the grove of copa-ibas sat.

"We're surrounded," Remo said.

"Exactly," Chiun said.

"What about Joey?" Remo said. There was no need for him to explain to Chiun that they could escape, but fighting their way through the fire could mean the young woman scientist's life.

Even as they spoke, the area around the log cabin began to turn into a maelstrom of sparks. Nearby, they could hear the thud of falling limbs from trees and the explosion of vehicles and bulldozers and tree-yanking machines that were parked all through the forest.

Joey met them at the door, rubbing her eyes.

"Oh, Christ," she said. "How the hell do we get out of here?"

"If we want to save the copa-ibas, we don't," Remo said. He looked at Chiun, almost helplessly. "Everything is burning."

"Not everything," Chiun said.

Remo stopped and looked. Around them, the fire was moving down the mountainsides like syrup down the side of a bowl. Trees were burning. Outbuildings. Logging equipment. What was not burning?

The snow.

The snow was not burning.

He nodded to Chiun, and together he and the old man began to pile up snow. They built a mound in the center of the biggest clearing in front of the camp buildings. When they had dug out a big hollow, Remo told Joey, "Get in."

"What?" she exclaimed.

"Just get inside that snow wall."

The girl, frightened now by the growing insidious crackle of the flames, gulped, nodded, and obeyed. Quickly, Remo and Chiun built a sloping roof of snow over the structure. The girl was sealed off from the flames. Hopefully, the igloo would last long enough for them to do their work. She was safe. Now save the copa-ibas. Then save themselves.

"What now, Chiun?" Remo said.

"Just follow," the Oriental said.

The old man's plan of attack was simple. "Every tree," he said, "wants to fall over on its side as much as it wants to stand up straight. We will help them."

They moved up the north side of the sloping mountain, until they were only fifty yards ahead of the wall of fire, which was swooping down the mountainside, leapfrogging from burning tree to burning tree. As Remo watched, Chiun felt the side of a tree trunk, searching with his hands for the point of critical balance. Then, with a push that was almost childlike, Chiun pressed against the tree, and with a ripping, cracking sound, the big timber toppled to the ground.

Remo understood. He and Chiun flashed along the line of trees, pushing them over. Big trees took down smaller trees. Slowly, they were creating a clearing, in which toppled trees were piled one on top of another. As the flames coming down the hillside met that wall, there would be no more standing trees for the flames to jump to. The fire would burn itself down toward the ground and ignite the fallen trees, but it would be a slow process, and the fire would not have enough energy to jump across the firebreak.

Without resting, without waiting, Chiun kept working his way around the rim of the bowl of the mountain. Remo raced ahead, leveling a broad swath of timber, then would feel Chiun run past him to do the same thing ahead. They leapfrogged their way around the entire mountain, cutting a wide path through the standing pines.

Finally, after two hours, they moved back down the hill toward Alpha Camp.

As they looked up, around them, 360 degrees, they could see that already the fire was slowing, running into the wall of felled trees, unable to jump that wall, and now turning its energy away from expansion, and in upon itself, consuming itself, slowly burning itself out.

They decided to leave Joey in the igloo. She would be safe there until they came back.

Roger Stacy was leaning back in his swivel chair, playing with the gold-plated steel lumberjack's hook that had been presented to him by Tulsa Torrent at a testimonial dinner honoring his contributions to American forestry.

It was probably time, now, he decided, to call for help from surrounding fire departments. The fire through the forest should be out of control, too late for anybody to do anything about.

Joey Webb should be dead and the copa-ibas destroyed, and he on his way to being a very wealthy, very retired man.

It had all started that night when that bitch Webenhaus had made fun of his lovemaking. She had laughed at him. He had killed her husband and was going to kill her, but those goddamn Indians interrupted. He had been lucky to escape with his own life. And the baby Joey had survived, somehow, too.

There had been all those years of work with the copa-ibas, work that seemed that it would never be successful, and there had been all the money from the Association — which wanted to make sure that the copa-ibas never grew in the United States.

It was a shame, he thought, that he had to share any glory with anyone else from the Association. Stacy looked at the golden hook in his hands. It was a solid-steel bar, almost two feet long, bent into a square handle at one end, curved and razor-sharpened into a hook at the other end. And even though it was plated thickly with gold, it was still a deadly weapon.

He laughed inwardly. Perhaps he would present it to the other member of the Association as a gift. Right in the neck. The Association appreciated ruthlessness in its people, and such an act might put him on the right track with them. Who knew — he was still only 45 — there might be a second, more exciting career awaiting him in life.

"Stacy," a voice said. "It's all over."

He looked up to see Remo O'Sylvan and the old Oriental. He smiled at them, but his mind boiled. Why were they alive? How?

"I didn't hear you come in," he said.

"You didn't expect us either, did you?" Remo said.

"What are you talking about?" he said.

"The fire you set," said Remo.

"Fire? What fire? Our trees?" He jumped up and ran to the window. He had hoped to see the forest still full of flame, but instead, the rim of the valley showed only a thin line of flame around it, the fire having been unable to jump the thick firebreak Remo and Chiun had built.

"The copa-ibas?" Stacy said, his mind moving fast, looking for answers.

"Can it," Remo said. "Who paid you to stop the project? To kill Joey?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Stacy said. He walked back and sat in his chair. "And if you're going to talk crazy, you can get out. I've got to get the fire departments here." He was sweating now, and the churning of his body was pumping off the smell of his after-shave lotion, a heavy musky smell.

He reached for the telephone. Remo slapped his hand away and gently pushed the chair Stacy was in. It began to whirl around. Remo pushed again. Stacy whirled faster. He thought he was going to throw up. He began to lose his peripheral vision. His sight took on a red tinge. All he could see was Remo's face. Faster and faster he whirled.

Stacy raised the hook and swung at Remo. Somehow he missed. His chair was slowing down. He was facing the old Oriental. He moved the hook back again and swung at the old man.

The last thing Roger Stacy ever saw was Chiun fluttering his hands delicately, slowly, at him, and the golden hook traveling in a long powerful arc, past the old man and back toward himself.

The hook caught Stacy below the Adam's apple and ripped upward, coming to rest in the roof of his mouth.

Roger Stacy fell forward and whimpered, as the blood and the life ran out of him.

Remo stood up from the edge of the desk where he had been perched. "Case closed," he said.

"Not so," said Chiun.

"No?" said Remo. "Smell that after-shave? That's that sweet smell we've been smelling every time there's a body," he said.

"No," Chiun said. "It is similar, but it isn't the same."