"It's the Indian name. I believe it is Pawnee."
"It's pap. The whole thing is pap. Pap and crap."
"The PAPA leader, Theodore Soars-With-Eagles, is claiming that the HELP virus is not a virus at all, but a result of the depletion of the ozone layer."
Chiun's voice lifted. "There is no ozone hole. The illustrious Thrush Limburger has told America this."
"What did he say?" asked Smith.
"Chiun's latest kick-or it was before he discovered the Home Shopping Network."
"He what?"
"Look, let's stay on the subject. You can have your heart attack when the charge card bills come in."
Smith sighed, sounding like a leaky steam valve. "Theodore Soars-With-Eagles has called upon the federal government to help head off the coming HELP epidemic."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?"
"The new Vice President has heard his appeals and made a plea to the new President. He has asked us to look into it."
"Isn't this kinda flaky? Don't we have better things to do like-and here is major hint number 334-taking care of the quack who likes to help sick old ladies commit suicide?"
"The Dr. Mordaunt Gregorian matter is still under review."
"Call him Dr. Doom like everybody else. And I want a crack at him."
"Later."
"Don't we have the right to refuse dippy missions from the President?"
"We do," admitted Smith. "But the President has had a good look at our operating budget, and he is eyeing us for cutbacks."
"Wait'll he finds out Chiun just doubled the budget in one shopping day," Remo said.
Smith groaned. Then he said, "I have decided it would be politic to look into this."
"Chiun isn't going to like this," Remo warned.
Chiun, in the middle of unpacking a juice machine, straightened to demand, "What am I not going to like?"
Remo grinned and saw his chance. "Smitty wants us to look into the bug-eaters who are dying out in California," he said and waited for the wail of outraged complaint.
Instead, the Master of Sinanju said amiably, "Inform Emperor Smith that we will be happy to meet with the unfortunates who are reduced to eating bugs."
"We will?"
Chiun nodded. "Happily."
Remo glowered and said into the phone, "Just tell me what I absolutely have to know, Smitty."
"Their headquarters is called Nirvana West, which is a commune of sorts near the town of Ukiah, north of San Francisco. It was jointly founded by Brother Karl Sagacious and Theodore Soars-With-Eagles."
"Soars-With-Eagles?"
"He claims to be a Chinchilla Indian."
"Chinchilla?"
"According to the newspapers, that is his tribe's name. Although I must admit, his features do not appear very Indian."
"Wait a minute. Are we talking American Indian or East Indian?"
"American. "
"I played cowboys and Indians all over Newark as a kid, Smitty, and I never heard of any Chinchilla tribe. And whoever heard of an Indian brave named Theodore?"
"It's possible Theodore Soars-With-Eagles is a white man with some Chinchilla blood in him," said Smith.
"It's possible he's full of wampum too."
"There has been bad blood between the Sagacious faction and the Eagles faction of PAPA," Smith went on. "Eagles has ample motivation to have done away with Sagacious. Look into that angle, Remo. It may all be a tawdry power struggle in a fringe group. You will go in as investigators from the Food and Drug Administration, and mingle with the federal scientists who are already on site."
"Anything else?"
"Yes. Keep your expenditures to a minimum." And Harold Smith hung up.
Remo hung up too and turned in time to see the Master of Sinanju running a blob of Silly Putty through his juice machine.
"Since when are you all hot to watch a bunch of lunatics in their natural element?" he asked Chiun.
"Since I have gotten tired of watching the old lunatics," replied the Master of Sinanju, lifting the lid and looking in to see the interesting concoction he had just created.
Chapter 4
It had all started on the opening day of school.
Five-year-old Kevin O'Rourke had been looking forward to school for a long time-almost three weeks, since his mother had first sat him down to explain kindergarten to him.
Kevin O'Rourke was an exceptional child. All mothers think their offspring are exceptional. Mrs. Bernadette O'Rourke was no different. She thought young Kevin quite a lad. And he was the spitting image of his dear father, like herself a native-born Irishman, but who fought for his adopted country, the U.S.A., in the Gulf War and died in a Scud missile attack, God rest his soul.
Young Kevin looked exactly like Patrick-the young Patrick whom Bernadette could still conjure up in her mind's eye whenever she thought back to the tiny Irish village of Dingle where they had grown up together. Kevin had the same open face; what one day would be the same fierce Catholic faith, the same stubbornness, but also the same willingness to trust others.
He made her feel proud even through her sharp loss.
And so on the day she drove him to the Walter F. Mondale Grammar School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Mrs. Bernadette O'Rourke rode on a cushion of air. Oh, she was not without motherly pangs. For one thing, there had been no one with whom to talk over her decision to send Kevin to a public school instead of Catholic school. It had been an economic decision, really. The truth was she was already working two jobs and didn't have even the modest tuition the parochial schools charged. There were scholarships, certainly. Unfortunately, they didn't have any for Americans like Kevin O'Rourke. He was the wrong color for scholarships.