This was the nerve center of CURE.
As soon as he had the system up and running, Smith called up incoming reports on the derailment he had just survived, downloading them into his ongoing Amtrak file.
Twenty-odd minutes into this he remembered to call his wife.
"I am fine," Smith said without bothering with a greeting.
"Why wouldn't you be, Harold?" Maude Smith asked sleepily.
"I was on the train that derailed but I am fine."
"Oh, Harold."
"I am fine," he repeated.
"Where are you now?"
"At work."
"You should come home, Harold. You sound tired."
"I will see you tomorrow," said Harold, hanging up and thinking that there was no reason to let Maude know he had been on that wreck. There was no sense worrying her needlessly.
That was hours ago. Smith had toiled through the night, pausing only when he experienced an uncontrollable fit of coughing. His tongue tasted brackish. His stomach was sour. He loaded it up with antacid pills and Maalox, all to no avail.
When his secretary showed up for work, he asked her for black coffee but said nothing about the accident.
The wire feeds on the Mystic derailment were still coming in. The death toll was mounting in slow increments. It looked as if the final fatality total would exceed forty. Smith read that information, making absolutely no connection with his own brush with death.
In his mind a person either survived an accident or did not. One is dead or living; there is no in-between. Harold Smith still breathed. Almost didn't count.
The first bulletins were fragmentary and under constant revision. The earliest reports simply attributed the derailment to excessive speed. This was revised to human factors, a euphemism for crew fatigue or drug-induced engineer impairment.
When he read that the train had struck a bulldozer, Smith frowned like a puckering lemon.
"What would a bulldozer be doing on the tracks?" he muttered.
A follow-up report referred to cable being laid in the vicinity of the derailment, and suggested the bulldozer had attempted to cross the tracks and become stuck. There were no witnesses and no missing workmen.
"Ridiculous," Smith said. "There is no crossing on trackage so close to the water and no place on the shore side for the bulldozer to go."
But there the reports stood. A bulldozer had blocked the tracks. That was the end of it as far as the media was concerned. All they cared about were facts-whether true or not.
Smith moved on, looking into the Big Sandy incident.
It was similar. Only it fell within acceptable accident parameters. A driver tried to beat a train at a crossing. It happened with numbing regularity, like squirrels leaping into the paths of cars.
The decapitation of the engineer and subsequent behavior of the runaway Southern Pacific freight train was a different matter. It warranted investigation. Yet the preliminary NTSB report mysteriously cited drug use. It was a conclusion completely unsupported by available facts.
So when Remo had called, Smith sent him to the site, knowing that the Mystic investigation could wait. They were in the salvage stage now. There was nothing for them to do there. NTSB was still en route.
SMITH HAD MADE no progress by the time Remo checked in from Texas.
"Go ahead," Smith said, upon picking up the blue contact phone.
"Smitty, we found something."
"Yes?"
"The engineer was beheaded."
"I know that."
"No, you're thinking of decapitated. This guy was definitely beheaded according to Chiun."
"What is the difference?"
"The difference is a sword."
"I beg your pardon, Remo."
"According to Chiun, the engineer was deliberately beheaded."
"By whom?"
"Well, that's where it gets sticky."
"I am listening."
Remo's voice moved away from the receiver. "Here, Little Father, you tell him. It'll sound better coming from you."
The Master of Sinanju's squeaky voice came on the line. "Emperor, I bring difficult tidings."
"Yes?"
"Your servants have determined that foreign elements have been at work."
Smith said nothing. Chiun would tell it in his own way.
"These crimes have been perpetrated by Japanese agents, possibly only one."
"Why do you say that?"
"In both places Japanese vehicles were employed to block the right-of-way."
"How do you know this, Master Chiun?"