Remo nodded.
"Big Fed," Thompson said, smiling.
Remo turned to go. "Hey," Thompson called. "Thanks. Thanks for coming back for me."
Remo didn't respond. If it hadn't been for Thompson's body between the flying piece of metal and himself, Remo would probably be dead somewhere in Colombia by now. If it hadn't been for Thompson's insistence on flying to an Air Force base instead of a quiet little hospital in Bogota, Remo would be trying to figure out a way to get out of South America instead of taking off in a supersonic plane. And now Thompson was going under the knife, and after that, Thompson was going to go to jail for something he didn't even know anything about. And Thompson was thanking him.
That was fate, Remo thought, not without some bitterness. The way the world went. That was the biz. And Thompson understood that, because he was one of those creatures who kept on going while fate was throwing sucker punches to his insides. He was a man.
"I'll remember you," Remo said.
?Chapter Eighteen
Smith stood by the large tinted one-way windows of Folcroft Sanitarium that looked out over the beach of Long Island Sound. He was alone. He had never been so alone.
The first streaks of dawn were just beginning to lighten the sky, causing the ocean waves below to sparkle pink and purple. The pain in Smith's side still throbbed, but only dimly now. Chiun's ministrations had been better than any doctor's. The old man had even offered to remove the pain entirely, but Smith hadn't permitted that. He didn't hold with any system of medicine in which there was no pain. There was something vaguely immoral in the concept. Besides, the pain helped him think.
Back to the beginning.
Coffee. Someone had put heroin into every brand of coffee used in the United States. From what Remo had gathered, that someone wasn't a regular drug dealer.
The closest they had come was a name on a business card: George Brown of Saxonburg, Indiana. George Brown, who had virtually given the drugged coffee beans to every warehouse in the country, according to Smith's investigations.
The Folcroft computers had ascertained that there were four George Browns in the five-square-mile around Saxonburg, Indiana. The FBI claimed that none of them had been out of town in the past six months. That meant that the George Brown, the one who didn't compute in the Folcroft information banks, was an alias. Back to square one. Unless George Brown was Hugo Donnelly, government employee.
But Remo would have to find that out. Before it was too late. Or was it already too late?
And then the murders. Fourteen that Smith knew of for certain, and probably a fifteenth. Remo had mentioned the name "Pappy" in his last phone call before leaving the country, and a Paul "Pappy" Eisenstein, a known drug dealer, had cropped up on the homicide lists that same day. Fifteen victims, all of them in contact with Remo.
Somebody knew about Remo.
And somebody knew about Smith, knew enough to shoot him at point-blank range and take his attaché case, which contained enough incriminating evidence to destroy the Constitution of the United States forever.
He had been waiting ever since Remo had called from Malagua. It was a strange phone call, to say the least. For one thing, Remo had spoken entirely in code.
It was as if he knew that CURE was on the verge of destruction. Smith had desperately wanted to know the extent of Remo's information in the matter, but he had to keep the call as short as possible. The fewer the words, the more difficulty the thieves would have in decoding the transmission.
Remo told, in the language the Folcroft computers had devised, about Arnold and the woman. He gave his location and requested transport to Rye.
"Done," Smith responded in the same language. "But don't come here. Get to the lobby of the Excelsior Hotel in Washington. Chiun will meet you there with further instructions."
The connection was terminated. It had taken less than one minute. Then he walked to a pay phone, made several calls, arranged for the F-16 to take Remo to Washington with no questions asked, and returned to the office.
Chiun was still waiting silently in the corner he had appropriated. Smith wrote a long message on a piece of paper and folded it.
"There's a private plane waiting for you at the local airport," he said.
Chiun beamed. "For me? Alone? I may sit wherever I wish?"
"Anywhere," Smith said. "You'll be met at the end of your journey by a driver who will escort you to a hotel. Wait in the lobby for Remo, and give him this." He handed him the message. "No one else may see this," he warned.
"You shall be obeyed," Chiun said solemnly, bowing low. "Your humble servant does not forget the kindness of his illustrious Emperor. In the twilight of my years—"
"Er... that's fine, Chiun," Smith said distractedly. Chiun slipped the note into his sleeve and left, exhibiting all the dignity of his station.
Smith walked over to the window. The waiting had begun.
That had been hours ago. Dawn coming, and the attaché case was still missing. CURE was still operating, exposing the country to irreparable damage with each passing minute. Had he been right in not destroying the organization at midnight? Remo had provided some information, but not enough. Had Smith risked the future of America just to save his own skin? He didn't know. He went over the questions again and again. He just didn't know. There was so much to think about, and he was so tired of thinking.
George Brown. Hugo Donnelly. Saxonburg, Indiana. Does not compute. Does not compute.
It was 6:14.
"Tomorrow will be too late," he remembered saying. The waves outside his window were dappled with morning light. It was tomorrow.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
A gray-gloved hand ...
Suddenly he started to attention, so fast that he choked and coughed. Holding his side, he made his way back to the computer console, keyed in "SAXONBURG, INDIANA," and followed a new line of questioning.
By 7:02 he knew the answer.
He took his extra suit from the closet in his office, got dressed slowly and painfully, and called a taxi.
Before he left, he set the self-destruct mechanism on the Folcroft computers to go off automatically at noon. He arranged it so that the destruction of CURE could only be aborted by his own voice print, issuing directly from the telephone inside his attaché case.
Because if he was right, he would be in possession of the case by noon.
And if he was wrong, noon would be well past his appointed hour to die.
?Chapter Nineteen
Chiun's gold brocade robe looked even more splendid than usual, surrounded as it was by the threadbare furniture of the Excelsior Hotel lobby.
"Hi, Little Father," Remo said.
"Look at you," Chiun whispered, casting embarrassed looks all around. "A disgrace. Your shirt is torn. There is blood all over your face, dried like paint. I have arrived here in a private airplane. Do you know what it will do to my image to be seen associating with such a person as you? And what is that rag on your hand?"
"A bandage. I was shot."
"You, too? Has no one in this oafish country a decent sense of balance?"
"Smith?" Remo said, his voice rising. "You were supposed to watch him. How bad was it?"
"I do not have to explain myself to you," Chiun snapped. "The Emperor is well, and most grateful to me. He knows how to show gratitude, which is more than I can say for some persons who cannot even arrive in time for dinner."