"What evidence points to Grom?" Smith asked. "The same evidence that led me to this can of nuts in the first place. None."
"So why do you think it is Greg Grom behind all the outbreaks of violence?" Smith demanded. "We still don't know what he has to gain from any of it."
"You got me there," Remo said. "Maybe he's using some kind of mind-control potion. Maybe that's what got him where he is today."
Smith stared at the phone. "You mean, he drugged the people of Union Island to get himself elected? That's absurd."
"You wearing that butt-ugly green tie every day for forty years, that's absurd. Greg Grom spiking the coconut milk on Union Island, that makes perfect sense."
"If he did, then every resident of the island would be violently insane," Smith protested. "That's clearly not the case."
"Yeah. I don't have all the details worked out, but I do know Grom didn't get elected because of his charisma or his credibility. He doesn't have either."
"Maybe," Smith said. "We must consider the possibility that whoever is causing the poisonings had no connection to the islanders until he or she joined up with the group on the mainland. Which means we could see continued outbreaks in the South-Central U.S., even with the entourage back on their island."
"Nope," Remo said determinedly. "It won't happen. My gut says it's Grom."
Smith stared thoughtfully at the newspaper photo of fiberglass splinters. "I don't feel as confident, but going to Union Island is the logical next step until we have another occurrence. Mark?"
Mark Howard nodded. "I agree. Even without evidence it seems likely that whoever it was behind the poisonings, they were with the islanders."
"But we need hard evidence before we start assassinating the presidents of U.S. protectorates," Smith warned. "President Grom is off limits until proved guilty."
"Don't worry, I'll find proof," Remo said. "I won't snuff the punk until I have it."
"That would be heinous," Mark Howard said.
"Ha-ha-ha click," Remo said acidly.
Dr. Harold W Smith suppressed a subtle spasm in both corners of his perpetually sour mouth.
Chapter 29
The short buses were painted with parrots and palm trees. Tropical Transport was the name of the tour company. All the buses had a cardboard sign duct-taped to the front window with Chartered hand-lettered with a big black marker.
More cardboard-lots of it-had been used to cover the windows.
There was nobody inside yet. The four buses waited at the end of the Union Island International Airport's one and only runway. The bus lights were out. The runway lights were out. There were no flights scheduled to come in until the first morning tourist shuttle out of Miami at 6:00 a.m.
That was five hours away. Still, the lights of an aircraft appeared in the distance. They came closer, descending for a landing.
The runway lights blazed to life at the last minute, and the wheels of the chartered 747 touched down seconds later. It slowed fast, then came to a squeaking halt at the buses. The aircraft powered down at the same moment the runway lights faded to blackness, and there was nothing left except for a few yellow flashlight beams.
The Union Island Police Department wheeled the stairs into place and marched up to the aircraft doors. They had their billy clubs out. The doors opened and the police went in.
"Jesus Cheee-rist," Chief of Police Checker Spence grumbled. "It's a damn loony bin."
The aircraft was stuffed to the gills with lunatics. Most of them had the dead, sightless, unfocused eyes of a human vegetable. Their mouths hung slack, and when they turned to look at the police, their heads lolled from one side to the other, as if too heavy to control properly. A few of them were excited, yanking and pulling at their belts. Not one of them spoke.
Every man and woman had their hands cuffed behind their backs, which had to be a pretty uncomfortable way to fly. They all had their seat belts on. Otherwise the limp ones would have flopped to the floor.
"Hey, it's Alan from the tourism department!" One of the officers was aiming his billy club at a drooling, cadaverous figure in an aisle seat. The island government was tiny-everybody knew just about everybody.
"Hey, Alan, you feeling okay?" The officer leaned close.
Alan, from the tourism department, turned to face the officer. Spence could see the utter lack of vitality in the eyes, eyes that belonged in a corpse. He and his officer were both taken off guard when Alan from the tourism department bit a huge chunk of flesh out of the officer's neck. The officer went down screaming in the aisle.
"Jeesus!" Spence stormed down the aisle. He wasn't sure what he intended to do. For one thing, get the hunk of skin and muscle that was dangling from the teeth of Alan from the tourism department in hopes it could be reattached to the officer who was now pumping blood onto the aircraft floor.
Captain Spence didn't let his shock slow him. "Get the ambulance!" he shouted back to his other officers as he dropped to the floor beside the wounded man and applied heavy pressure to the wound. He felt the spurt of blood against his hand like water from a garden hose, and he knew he was feeling an open carotid artery. How many pints of blood had his man lost in just the past few seconds?
"Captain, watch out!"
The warning came almost too late. He felt someone leaning over him and he twisted fast. A pair of teeth chomped down, locking on to the material of his shirt. Captain Spence retreated up the aisle on all fours, dragging the shirt free. It wasn't Alan from tourism but a woman on the opposite side of the aisle. Agnes. From the island public relations administration. She was in her late sixties and her dentures fell out and bounced on the floor.
Spence grabbed his wounded officer's ankles and dragged him to the front, out of the reach of the passengers, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from the lunatic face of kindly old Agnes. She used to baby-sit Captain Spence's kids. They called her Grandma Aggy.
She had just tried to chew out his liver.
DIRECTOR OF TOURISM Dawn Summens never went to sleep that night.
She got her first clue of looming catastrophe when she checked her voice mail. There was a message from Grom. "It's me. We've had some problems at this end, and I think it's time to pull the plug on the tour. We'll be heading back tomorrow morning. Let's meet for breakfast and discuss our next move."
Summens had been taking off her earrings when the message started and she stood there now with one of them, a glimmering emerald stud, twirling in her fingers. Then she replayed the message.
No doubt in her mind. Grom was suppressing his excitement-or agitation. Had he achieved success? Or had everything blown up in his face?
Something told her it was bad news, not good. Grom was hiding something, which was a dangerous sign. Summens and Grom had an agreement. Greg was never, ever to hide anything from his right-hand man-bikini model-honesty was the key to their working and personal relationship.
Her apartment was a luxurious penthouse atop the Union Estates building. It was seven stories, the tallest structure on the island, and the surf rolled at its feet with a faint whisper. Summens strolled onto the balcony and regarded the moonlit waves carefully for a moment, looking for her answers there.
Something was afoot. She felt it in her gut. And she was going to find out what it was. Nobody screwed with Dawn Summens's well-laid plans and got away with it. Especially not that pudgy jerk Greg Grom.
She wheeled and headed for the desk in her bedroom. It looked like a very feminine dressing table, complete with a small mirrored tray of the world's most expensive perfumes. Summens sat at the frilly vanity chair, moved the tray aside and swung up the top of the desk. The levers inside lifted the keyboard to working height. She slid the top of the desk out of sight into its wall recess, revealing a twenty-inch flat screen monitor.
She snatched up the phone as she began her on-line search for information. Her first call went to her airport contact. She had a lock on at least one employee on each shift of the airport security staff. Her call automatically went to whoever was currently on duty.
"Ashecroft," he announced. "It's me."
Ashecroft's voice immediately lowered. "I was about to call you, Minister. We just got word about the president's flight coming in."
"What's their ETA?"
"Forty-five minutes," Ashecroft said. That lying son of a-!
"The police are here already," Ashecroft added.