From his boat moored out in Genfersee-the name his German forebears had given Lake Geneva-Herr Hahn watched Remo head up the driveway. The other two, which Hahn knew were the woman and the elderly Asian, trailed him up to the house.
The two men didn't walk so much as glide. Their grace had been apparent on the security cameras at the CCS, but it was far more obvious here, where he wasn't actually seeing their features. Here, they were only warm green ghosts moving with inhuman grace across his glowing monitor. A beautiful, perfect symphony of movement.
"What are you?" Herr Hahn asked the ghosts on his screen.
After the events at the greenhouse he was being even more cautious than usual. Hahn had assumed they would come here in search of Hubert St. Clair. He had already been given orders to destroy the house and all its contents. He had lingered a little longer in the hope that his assumption was correct. Now that they were here, he felt a fresh tingle of excitement. So new a sensation he wanted to savor it.
There wouldn't be much time to do so. In a few moments they'd all be dead, and Herr Hahn would have to satisfy himself once more with ordinary targets.
His ample stomach continued its thrilling butterfly dance in concert with the boat's rocking motion as the three green ghosts climbed the porch steps.
THE GRAVEL PATH LED from the driveway around to the back of the chalet where the broad deck looked out over the lake. Remo was first onto the porch. When Amanda followed Chiun up, she managed to make four steps squeak three times and nearly put an eye out on a hanging potted plant.
"Did your father disown you because you were a klutz?" Remo asked.
"No," Amanda snapped back as she stilled the swaying plant with both hands. She suddenly frowned. "Why? Did Daddy tell you that was why?"
"No," Remo said. "And be quiet." He was glancing around the area.
Lake Geneva was a living postcard photo, shimmering in the early-afternoon sunlight. Pleasure boats bobbed gently while Mouettes Genevoises-the small motorboats that shuttled between the old and new cities of Geneva-skimmed the silvery surface. A lone cruise ship carted tourists on camera excursions north to Montreux and Chillon. And somewhere down there, Remo sensed the distinct pressure waves of some kind of mechanical equipment directed at them. "You feel that, Little Father?"
Chiun nodded. "Whatever it is, it is farther away than most detection devices."
"Spying at a distance," Remo sighed. "Welcome to the future."
"Why?" Amanda asked. "What is it?" She was squinting around the back of the house.
A cold wind blew up the steep mountainside. Farther down, a road snaked across the hillside. Here and there, a few rooftops peeked out between frozen rock and winter trees.
"Nothing," Remo answered. "We're just being watched is all."
Amanda gripped his arm. "Where?" she whispered, worried once more about joining the deceased ranks of her fellow CCS scientists.
"Can't tell really," Remo said. "The waves are focused as they come at you, but they break down over distance. My guess would be the lake. It's coming from that direction, and it's got a clear shot up at the house. Mountains are way too far for us to feel anything."
Turning from the lake, he headed for the door. "You're still going in?" she asked. "Don't you want to get whoever's down there?"
"Too big an area to search. But you wanna go frisk some flounder, hey, be my guest."
A wall of glass panes lined the deck. One was a sliding door, which Remo pushed open.
Amanda noted as Remo and Chiun slipped inside that the two men failed to make a single sound as they walked. She tried to follow their catlike lead but found the hardwood floor creaking underfoot as soon as she followed them inside.
Amanda cringed at the sound. When Remo caught the look on her face, he shook his head.
"Don't sweat it," he said. "Nobody's here."
"Yes," the Master of Sinanju agreed. "However someone has been here recently."
Remo sniffed the air. "Smells like lard and sausages. One of the rooms back at the CCS smelled like that, too."
Chiun nodded agreement. "A German," the old man concluded darkly. "There was a time, Remo, back during the days of that little man with the funny mustache, when all of Europe smelled like this. To this day there are still corners of France that smell like Germany."
"No wonder," Remo said. "They fling open the door and throw up their hands every time some mailman in Dusseldorf hammers a new spike in his helmet. Still, stinking like a German beats stinking like a Frenchman any day of the week."
"Shouldn't you two be quiet?" Amanda whispered. She was glancing nervously around the big living room.
There were a few pictures on the walls. Remo could tell by their weird Sage Carlin-inspired uniforms which men worked for the CCS.
"I told you, no one's here," Remo said as he tore his gaze from the pictures.
He had detected another scent in the house. Nose in the air, he tracked it like a bloodhound to the cellar stairs.
"What is it?" Amanda asked when Remo stopped at the top of the staircase.
"I smell ammonia," Remo replied. "Back home I'd think it was just the laundry room, but since this is Europe, where washing day comes only after a good healthy round of black plague..."
Voice trailing off, Remo headed down the stairs.
HERR HAHN WATCHED the three glowing figures descend.
They managed to amaze him yet again. There was no searching of the rest of the house, as Hahn had expected. No trial and error of any kind. They entered the house, steered a beeline for the cellar door and went down.
Their certainty was unnerving. It was as if all the old rules were gone. All of his understanding of human behavior and ability, honed by years of experience, didn't apply to these two.
Yet as troubling as it was, it was also exhilarating. To be the best in his field meant so few challenges. Feeling a melancholy twinge for what he was about to do, Hahn placed his chubby hand on the portable console that sat on the map table in the cabin of his boat.
As he watched the silhouettes of the men and woman creep deeper into the basement, one fat finger lovingly caressed a gleaming silver toggle switch.
"THIS IS WHERE he stored them," Remo said.
Amanda saw nothing but a dirt cellar floor. An empty floor. But even she could now smell the thin odor of ammonia that lingered in the musty air. "Judging by the marks in the earth, there were more than thirty sacks stored here," the Master of Sinanju concluded.
"Burlap sacks," Remo said. "Big ones."
"That would probably be enough to hold all the seeds from the greenhouse plants," Amanda said. She shook her head in disbelief. "But he couldn't have. He wouldn't have."
"I thought we were past that," Remo said. He was looking at something in the corner. "Did he use that?"
Amanda saw that he was nodding to an antique wooden butter churn. Souring milk was slopped on the tarp on which it sat. Remo noted an old oil lamp hanging next to the churn. Both appeared to have been used recently.
"Hubert has a thing about machines," she explained. "I don't think he's really comfortable with technology. He uses all kinds of excuses just to get other people to turn on his lights or answer his phone for him."
"Not too crazy," Remo muttered.
His eyes strayed to the rear of the main cellar room. He saw something lying in the dirt near an open door. Going over, he picked up the tiny blue seed.