"Why?"
"Because Captain Walters is one of our men. So was Curpwell. They didn't know it, of course, but they worked for us. Walters was the next man in the chain above Curpwell. You've delivered the message, so forget Walters."
"Why the hell didn't you tell me Curpwell was one of ours?"
"I didn't want to inhibit you," Smith said.
"You've sure inhibited him. He's dead."
Smith ignored him. "Where are you going now?"
"I think those goons might be going to see Dr. Quake. I'm going there."
"Be careful."
"Right sweetheart. I'd hate for you to have to go through the trouble of requisitioning a flag for my funeral."
Remo hung up and jumped back into the car. Seconds later, it was roaring at top speed along the highway, nearing the mountains at the base of which was the Richter Institute.
So Curpwell was one of ours. And the Mafia moving its clumsy paws into the earthquake picture could end up burying an entire state by accident-a grave from Oregon to Mexico. Remo had to get to the quake makers first.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Richter Institute was nestled back on a small shelf hollowed out of the San Bernardino mountains. It was a small, one-story red brick building nestled in under an overhang of rock and it looked like California's 1970 version of the little one-room school.
From the road that circled around below, the building was not visible, but signs brought the traveller up a grade, over a wooden bridge that Remo felt was awfully loose and up onto the shelf. Remo pulled his red hardtop to the edge of the shelf and looked down.
There, only thirty feet below him, lay the San Andreas Fault, the time bomb that ticked away under California. The earth was broken and cracked there. Remo remembered from his geology texts the aerial views that showed the fault to be an almost perfectly straight line separating the two "plates" which cut through California. There was one flaw in the straight line. The Richter Institute was built right here, right on the bend in the fault, the spot where the fault was locked and had been for fifty years, building up pressure that could blow at anytime, tearing California apart.
At that moment, Remo realized why the bridge to the shelf had been so loose. It was designed that way so that it would drift if there were an earth tremor. A solidly anchored bridge might be destroyed.
Down around the bend of the shelf, near the fault below, Remo could see a pair of pipes jutting up from the ground. Near them was a small trailer-cabin, a Volkswagen bus parked in front of it. Remo craned his neck and looked left. Far away in the distance was another pair of pipes, barely perceptible at this distance, even to his eyes.
Remo put the car in gear and burned rubber, heading up toward the institute building.
There was only one car in front, a dark blue Cadillac brougham, and Remo pulled up alongside it. He reached out to feel its hood. The car was still hot-too hot for sitting in the shade. The Mafia men had not been here long. And Remo entertained for a moment the idea that there was an easy way to get rid of the Mafia: stop making Cadillacs. He'd have to be sure to mention it to Dr. Smith.
There was only one door into the building. Remo pushed it open, then stood inside the coolness for a moment, listening. His ears picked up the sound of voices to his left. He turned that way down a long corridor that ran along the front of the building, with all the offices on its right.
One door was open and Remo walked in. He was in a laboratory, a large open room illuminated brightly by overhead lights, the lights glinting off the glass and chrome tables on which there were rows and rows of test tubes, piles of dirt and stone.
In one corner of the room, there was a computer console that covered almost half the wall. Its tapes whirred softly as they spun. Multi-colored lights flashed on and off and dials pulsated with information gathered from God knew where.
Remo stepped toward the door to listen in. The voices were muffled by the rhythmic thumping of some kind of machinery; Remo strained to listen.
A harsh voice said: "Forget that scientific jazz. How do you make an earthquake? That's all we want to know."
And the deepest voice Remo had ever heard answered, the words coming so slowly that it seemed to take all the speaker's energy to drop his voice into the basement of his throat, "But you can't do it without science, don't you see?"
"Well, just tell us how you do it."
"I don't do it. But it could be done." The voice ponderously moved on. "Now try to understand. Along the different fault systems-a fault is a break in the earth-pressure builds up along the crack. When the pressure gets too great, there is an earthquake. Now what could be done-mind you, could be done- would be to relieve some of this pressure before it builds so high that it must blow. It's rather like boiling water on a covered pot on the stove. If you tilt the cover up slightly, it releases the pressure and then the water doesn't boil over or the cover blow off. It's the same principle."
"All right, all right. How do you relieve the pressure?"
"No one can yet. I've been trying to develop a new kind of pump that would use water pressure to do it. That would make many small tremors to relieve pressure slowly and thus prevent a big quake. But the work is slow, particularly since the government cut off my research funds. I don't know if it will ever be done."
There was a long pause. Then the first voice said, "Dr. Quake, I don't believe you. Somebody out here is making earthquakes. You're either doing it or you know who's doing it. Now you're going to tell us about it or we'll make you wish you had."
"I don't believe that you're really from the FBI," came Dr. Quake's voice of doom.
"You're very smart, professor. Now if you're really smart, you'll tell us what we want to know."
All right. Time, Remo thought.
He stepped in through the partially opened door. "Good afternoon, professor," he said, smiling stupidly. There were only three men and it took no imagination at all to pick Dr. Quake. He was a heavy man, not really fat, but heavy, wrapped in a tweed Jacket and pants that matched neither each other nor him. His face was a perfect sphere and an electric shock of graying black hair ran halfway down his forehead, where it met the upward thrust of a giant set of iron-gray eyebrows that splayed in all directions like frozen splashes of hair, shooting up to the sides and down over his metal-rimmed glasses. He was sitting on a high stool next to the laboratory table. The other two men were standing. They were young, Mafia types.
A typical Mafia pair. One looked as if he had an IQ of seven. The other looked intelligent enough, but had all the facial character of the third boy from the left in the road production of Guys and Dolls.
IQ Seven turned to Quake. "Who the hell is this creep?" he said, nodding his head in derision at Remo, who still wore the white trousers, shirt and sneakers of the morning.
"I'm Remo Blomberg, the professor's assistant," Remo said. "Professor, there's no point in trying to fool these men any longer. I think, yes, I truly think that we should give them the secret of the earthquakes."
The two Mafia men stared at Remo and did not notice Dr. Quake start to say "but . . .".
Remo talked to the two men directly. "It's a new machine we've invented," raising his voice to carry over the steady thumping that filled the room. "We call it the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scalerizer." So much for Smith's geology textbooks.
"Yeah?" said the smart one. "Well, how do you work it?"
"It works off Vitamin E compound. You treat the ground as if it were a yeast, you see, and you pump it full of carbon dioxide. This creates a gaseous imbalance. Then you inject large quantities of Vitamin E-not the stuff you buy in the drugstore, of course-but real, power-packed Vitamin E. And you pump it into the fissures with pneumatic ninja shots. It relieves the gaseous imbalance and you have an earthquake. It's really quite simple," he said, bending over, playing with the crease of his pants, trying not to laugh.
He looked up. "Anyone can work it. A geological belch. We've caused a few minor earthquakes with it, already. Do you want to buy one? Got a town you want destroyed?"
The two hoodlums were confused now. Their instructions obviously did not carry this far. They looked at each other, then the smarter one spoke again: "We want to see it first."
Remo addressed Dr. Quake. "Professor. There's really no use in not cooperating. I'll show them the Mercalli Scalerizer." That's two for Smith. Remo was fast becoming a convert to the cause of education.
Remo turned to go back through the door. Get them away from Quake. The one hood who had done all the talking waved at the professor. "You stay put, Professor, and don't try anything stupid. We're not forgetting that you tried to lie to us. We'll be back."
The two men followed Remo who led them through the next laboratory and out into the hall. Remo heard one of them say: "Blomberg, eh? Trust a Jew to know when to play ball."
Remo led them down the stone hall toward the other end of the building, looking for a door that was sure to be open. To his left, he saw one slightly ajar.
"It's in here, men," he said, waving his arm to the left. He pushed open the door and walked in, the two men right at his heels.
He was in a small kitchen.