"Hmm," Smith mused. "This could be instructive, Remo. The two methods of attack they have used thus far are suggestive of dire ecological predictions made by Carlin and the CCS through the years. It could be a pattern."
"Maybe," Remo said. "But I don't know if you can read too much into it, Smitty. It could be that they were gonna do this cockamamy stuff anyway and we were just tossed on the barbecue at the last minute. I think they were in the market to trash St. Clair's house. And they burned up those trees of theirs with the acid. They might just be covering their tracks. And speaking of the trees, it looks like St. Clair picked them clean of seeds before he took off."
A thin intake of air passed Smith's bloodless lips. "You are saying Hubert St. Clair is in possession of the C. dioxa seeds?" the CURE director croaked.
"Looks that way, Smitty," Remo said.
Smith's gnarled hand clenched tighter around the receiver. For a silent moment he tried to comprehend the consequences of St. Clair's actions. His silence spoke volumes about his gravest fear.
He forced calm into his voice. "Do you have any idea where he has gone?" Smith asked finally.
"Nope. That's what I'm calling you for," Remo said. "My guess would be a tree farm in some psycho version of Hooterville where he can plant his little seeds in the ground and watch them shoosht up to the sun and the sky."
Smith jammed the phone between shoulder and ear. Dropping his hands to the edge of his desk, he began typing rapidly at his hidden capacitor keyboard. Trails of light followed in the wake of his drumming fingertips-When he was through, Smith frowned. "I don't have a record of St. Clair leaving Geneva on any commercial flights," he said. "One moment, please, Remo."
After another quick search, his gray face grew more animated.
"Here it is," Smith resumed. "The CCS jet left Cointrin International Airport a few hours ago. It is en route to Brazil."
"I guess he's going for something bigger than just some dinky little tree farm," Remo said, concerned. "How are we supposed to find him if he heads into the jungle?"
"With luck you can head him off before then," Smith said. He continued to type quickly away at his keyboard. "According to the records I have accessed, the CCS keeps a few suites year-round in a Macapa hotel. They are reserved for members of the organization when on trips to the rain forest. The hotel staff has been alerted to the arrival of St. Clair and his CCS group."
"Okay, get us there fast and we can maybe pull the plug on Mr. Greenjeans before he gets started."
"My thinking exactly," Smith said. "There is an Air Brazil flight to Rio de Janeiro leaving from Heathrow this evening." He issued a few commands from his computer. "I have arranged for the three of you to catch a connecting flight to London from Geneva in one hour."
"There's only two of us, Smitty," Remo said slowly.
"I want you to take Dr. Liftor with you," Smith said.
"Aw, c'mon," Remo complained. "Do I have to?"
"We can't afford to risk her life. Once you leave, whoever has twice attempted to kill her could return at any time. Presumably, they are working on the order of Dr. St. Clair. We cannot allow them to succeed. She has full knowledge of the C. dioza and is apparently the only one left from the CCS who wishes to stop it from being introduced into the wild. You and Chiun will be the best bet for her survival. And she, perhaps, of ours."
In the Geneva apartment of Amanda Lifton, Remo cast a hooded glance around the living room.
The place was all fuzzy pinks and fluffy whites. Most of it looked like the FAO Schwarz version of the elephants' graveyard. Heaps of stuffed toys were arranged in corners, lined on tables and parading snout to tail across shelves.
They'd stopped at a store on their way there to get him a change of clothes. Since he hadn't yet changed, Amanda had spread newspapers on the sofa for him to sit on before she went in to take a shower. It was fifteen minutes later, and the water was still running.
As soon as she was out of the room, he'd wadded up the papers and threw them on the floor. The white sofa was smeared black where he was sitting. The back of the couch was lined with stuffed animals. Amanda apparently had great affection for them. Remo saw that each one had a pretty little pink bow with a tiny silver name tag.
"If civilization has to rely on her, we'd all better start practicing holding our breath," Remo grumbled. "And speaking of the guy who made the chalet go poof, we almost caught him but he got away. I don't know how deep he is in this, but maybe he could help us track St. Clair if it becomes necessary."
"Do you have a description of the assassin?" The Master of Sinanju was sitting on the floor near Remo, a blank sheet of parchment spread out before him. He clucked his tongue disapprovingly.
"He was not an assassin, Emperor Smith," Chiun called in annoyance. "An assassin is an individual skilled in the art of precision location and removal services, not some boom-flinging Hun. And most important, an assassin is only an assassin who succeeds in eliminating his target." Shaking his head, he dropped his voice. "I can tell him until I am blue in the face, but no matter how long we work for the lunatic he will never get it right."
He returned to his blank parchment.
"Did Chiun say that this man was German?" Smith asked.
"Yeah," Remo said. "He stunk German, anyway. Fat and fortyish. Got away on a boat."
"Nothing more to go on?" Smith asked.
"Sorry," Remo said. "We were pretty far away, not to mention doing the vertical plummet at the time."
"I will check the marinas on Lake Geneva," Smith said. "Perhaps the employee records of the CCS will prove helpful. In any event, your tickets will be waiting at Cointrin when you arrive. Stay in touch." Smith broke the connection.
With a sigh, Remo hung up the phone. "We just got saddled indefinitely with the nutty heiress," he said.
Chiun didn't look up. "Consider yourself fortunate if that is your greatest worry this week, Remo Williams," the old man intoned. He seemed to be trying to burn words into the parchment with the act of thought alone.
It was the same parchment the tiny Asian had been staring at for the past week. Sitting on the floor of Amanda's apartment, he was still struggling with how exactly to enter his confession about Remo's whiteness into the Sinanju Scrolls without making it sound like a confession.
Even though Remo knew that he was the one being blamed for something that he obviously had no control over, this particular distraction of Chiun's was better than those maddeningly secretive letters the old man had been writing. At least here Remo knew what he was in for.
"I don't know why you think it's such a crime for a Master to train a white pupil," Remo grumbled. "You know as well as me that I'm not the only one to learn Sinanju."
Chiun knew to whom Remo was referring. One of the greatest foes they had ever faced was a white trained in Sinanju. Jeremiah Purcell was now in a perpetually medicated state in the security wing of Folcroft, a threat to no one.
"It is not the same," Chiun said. "He was the disciple of my wicked nephew. I am responsible for you, not him."
As Chiun continued to not write, Remo cast a depressed eye around Amanda Lifton's apartment. "Maybe the nice thing I'm supposed to do is set fire to this place," he said suddenly. "Probably not. I guess her neighbors could choke from inhaling all this saccharin."
He knocked most of the stuffed toys off the couch as he spread his grimy arms across the back.
"Are you gonna be through in there sometime this week?" he yelled into the bathroom.
"Almost finished!" Amanda called out over the spray of the shower. "Be careful of my petsywetsies!"
"You betsy-wetsie," Remo called back as he used a stuffed kitty to wipe the oily soot off his shoes. When he was done, he threw cat and shoes into the rubbish and pulled a brand-new pair of eight-hundred-dollar loafers from a plastic bag.
Chapter 13
The big, sprawling plantation was a throwback to the long gone days of bright and shining British colonialism.
The clapboard house and its wraparound porch were painted a clean and tidy white. Although the African sun burned down hot all year, the boards never warped, were not allowed to get too dry.
Mosquito screens enclosed the neat little gazebo that sat to one side of the front yard. When the days stretched long into twilight and night drew in like a lazy fog, the orange glow from a lone pipe bowl could often be seen through those screens. Swinging lazily with the back-and-forth motion of the old porch swing.
The sun had set on the British Empire, but some small vestige of it lived on in that big old house. Odd that the neighboring farmers would think that, since the sole occupant of the house was not English, but American. But he had that cool confidence, the superior mannerly attitude of the velvet-gloved conquerors their ancestors had come to know, then fear and, finally, to hate.
A few years before, attackers had targeted the whites who lived in Zimbabwe. Gentleman farmers who had inherited the land they lived on from their fathers, who in turn had inherited it from their fathers before them, were being slaughtered in their homes. No one lifted a hand to stop the bloodshed. In fact, it was encouraged. But even when the president had given his approval to the murder of whites and the seizing of their land, the gangs of killers who roamed the wilderness cut a wide swath around that clean little house with the neatly trimmed rosebushes and the American owner who liked to sit out in the gazebo on warm summer nights to smoke his pipe and watch the stars.