Timber Line

Chapter Seventeen

Remo didn't trust himself to deal with small-town bureaucracies, so he called Smith and told him to do whatever was necessary to get local fire departments to respond to the burning forests of Tulsa Torrent.

Then he sent Chiun back to Alpha Camp to protect Joey Webb.

And then he drove down the road toward the main camp of the Mountain High Society. Something had been nibbling at his mind for the last thirty hours, and he had finally remembered what it was.

The society's camp was rapidly emptying. The police were letting the protesters leave, a few at a time, and then shuffling them down the road back toward town, under police escort, away from Tulsa Torrent land.

The police were occupied with the protesters when Remo arrived, and he was able to slip into Cicely Winston-Alright's trailer without being challenged.

Her butchered body had been covered with a large blanket. But on a little stand in her room, he found what he was looking for. It was a box and inside was a picture.

When he had made love earlier to the woman, she had said, "Only one man" and pointed to the box.

The picture was signed, "To CeCe. With eternal love. Lance." Lance Alright. Her last husband. Remo looked at the picture. The bland, blue eyes of Harvey Quibble stared back at him.

He shoved the picture into his trouser pocket. Eight minutes later, he was back at Alpha Camp. He could see fire-fighting apparatus, some painted yellow, some painted red, on the narrow roads leading through the forests, moving up the trails and pumping water on the fire, which now gave signs of burning itself out.

As he went into the Alpha Camp clearing, he saw Chiun. Chiun raised his finger to his mouth to shush Remo, and the younger man walked up silently toward his mentor.

Chiun pointed toward the igloo. Remo could hear voices inside. There was Joey's and there was Harvey Quibble's.

"Why?" Joey was asking.

"It's a long story," Quibble said. His little pipsqueak's voice sounded different now, strong and in control.

"Tell me about it," Joey said.

"I guess there's no reason why not," Quibble said. "I've won and you've lost, and I'll be out of here soon." He paused. "I was married to Cicely. She was involved in this Mountain High stuff. I invested her money for her. Then we went broke. Investments went sour and we had nothing."

"So? That happens to a lot of people," Joey said.

"Not to our kind of people. We loved each other, but we couldn't love each other poor. Fortunately, I knew people in the Middle East in the oil business, and they had heard of the your copa-iba project. It terrified them, the idea of America being self-sufficient with oil. They started a group called the Association, whose whole purpose was to sabotage the project. Cicely and I got divorced; that made it easier for me to take a new identity and get back here as a federal employee, thanks to some helpful congressmen."

"But why the killings?" asked Joey.

"We just wanted to mess up the project, make it too expensive for Tulsa Torrent to continue with," Quibble said. "We never thought that you'd find a way to germinate those seeds and grow them rapidly."

"That shows how little you know," Joey said. "We've found a way to grow them now in any climate. You've lost, Quibble."

"Not really," Quibble said. "Because you'll be dead, and that'll be that. Your secret will go with you."

"We'll see," Joey said stubbornly.

"It's already been taken care of," Quibble said confidently. "That fool Stacy had already notified the company of his decision that this project should be halted as nonproductive. And after I dispose of you, I'm just going to go over and turn off the heaters on the copa-ibas. In all this confusion, before anybody notices it, the trees will be dead from the cold."

Remo spoke up, loudly.

"The only thing dead is Stacy," he said. He heard a scurrying inside the igloo, and then Harvey Quibble came out through the large opening.

He held a big automatic in his hand.

"You," he said, with a small smile. "Well, well, I have all the troublemakers in one spot."

"It's all over. Quibble. Or should I say Lance?"

"When did you know?"

"Just a while ago. It was your after-shave that tipped us. That smell was everywhere we found a body. And Cicely still had your picture in her bedroom. Tell me, how does it feel to order your own wife murdered?"

"Ex-wife." Quibble said. "She had to go, for the good of the program. We needed a martyr."

"And Pierre LaRue?" Remo asked.

"We needed a scapegoat," Quibble said evenly.

"How'd you kill Carpathian?" Remo asked.

"An injection. I was afraid if you got to him, he'd talk," Quibble said. "How did you get on to me?"

"You made a mistake when you left that tape recorder in the snow," Remo said. "A federal tape recorder. And you're the only federal employee around here. I should have known that sooner."

"Actually, I never expected you to find it," Quibble said. "I thought it would just stay buried under the snow. But, all's well that end's well," he said.

He began to back away from Remo and Chiun to give himself more safe shooting room. His hand was steady as he held the gun on them. But as he moved backward, past the opening to the igloo, Joey reached out, grabbed his heel, and Quibble fell to the snow-covered ground. The gun squirted out of his hands in Remo's direction. Quibble got up, looked at the gun, at Remo, then turned and ran, heading into the forest.

Remo watched him for a moment. Then his eyes lit on Pierre LaRue's double-bladed axe, buried deep in the tree where Remo had thrown it.

Remo yanked the axe from the tree. He raised it over his head and then threw it forward with his right hand. The heavy handle of the axe whistled as it turned over and over again. The blade of the tool buried itself deep into Harvey Quibble's back. He fell to the ground with a whooshing exhalation of air.

"Timber," mumbled Remo under his breath, as he watched the man fall.

Joey Webb came out of the igloo and stood with Remo and Chiun.

Chiun looked around at the trees, at the brightly starred sky and said, "This is beautiful. I think I will go up into the woods to commune with nature. Just me and the outdoors, sharing the oneness of life."

"Carry your own trunks," Remo said.