"I'll see what I can do," Davic offered cautiously. As the detective spoke, one of the phones on Smith's desk jangled to life. There were two phones, one black and one blue. They were both old rotary sets. None of the lights were lit on the black one.
Smith didn't look at the ringing blue phone. "Thank you, Detective," the Folcroft director said. He made not a move toward the telephone.
"Aren't you going to answer that, sir?"
"Yes," Smith said. The strained smile he plastered across his face made him look like a grimacing corpse. "Of course I am." Heart pounding, he picked up the blue phone's receiver. "Dr. Smith here," he said stiffly.
"Took you long enough," the voice on the other end of the line growled. "What, were you out frisking the nurses for swiping copier paper again?"
"Oh, hello," Smith said, scarcely hearing the caller's words. "Yes, that is fine. But I'm busy right now, Aunt Mildred. I'll have to call you back."
"Smitty, maybe you should drop the Aunt Mildred thing. At your age, any aunt you'd have would have to be a hundred million years old. Listen, we're done in Europe, but Chiun's acting screwier than usual. I need some busywork just to get a break from him. Gimme another assignment."
"That's wonderful news, Aunt Mildred," Smith replied. "Thank you for calling. But I really must go now. Give my regards to Uncle Martin."
He hung up the phone.
"I apologize for that," Smith said to Detective Davic. He held his unnatural smile. "You were saying?"
The instant Davic opened his mouth to speak, the blue phone began ringing once more.
Smith grabbed the receiver. "Hello?"
"Are you on drugs?" demanded the caller angrily. Without saying a word, Smith pressed the phone to his gray vest. He felt the outline of the poison pill that he kept in his pocket press against his narrow chest.
"Forgive me," Smith said tightly, "but this is an important business call that I need to take. Will you excuse me for a moment?"
"Yes, sir," Davic said. The detective left the office, pulling the door tightly shut.
"I can't talk at the moment," Smith said into the phone. "There's a crisis here."
"Crisis shmisis," the voice on the phone dismissed. "Are you gonna give me another assignment, or do I have to scrape one up on my own? And believe me you wouldn't like that. I'm in an 'international incident' kind of mood."
Smith hesitated. This was one of only two men on Earth who might be able to help right now. On the other hand, with the police here, he might just invite more questions.
Smith booted up his computer. He found an active file at the very top of CURE's target list. Spitting out a few rapid commands, he hung up the phone.
Quickly shutting off his computer, he headed back out to find the detective. When he entered his secretary's office, he found Davic talking excitedly on a cell phone.
"I'll meet you out front," he was saying. He clicked off the phone, stuffing it in his pocket. "We found another body," Davic said to Smith. "Out in the woods near the north wall. They think it might be your assistant."
Mrs. Mikulka gasped. Pressing one hand to her open mouth, she fell back into her chair. She looked up at Smith with frightened, tear-filled eyes.
Standing next to her desk, the Folcroft director put an arthritic hand on her shoulder. He gave a comforting squeeze. It was a greater show of emotional support than he'd given her when her husband had passed away of a sudden heart attack eighteen years before.
"I am going with you," Smith insisted to Davic. It was clear by his tone that there would be no arguing.
Detective Davic made a quick decision. "Let's get those tranquilizer guns," he said, spinning for the door.
As the two men hurried from the office, Smith already had his key chain in hand. And etched in the lines of his patrician face were equal parts determination and dread.
Chapter 2
His name was Remo and he wasn't quite sure of the correct spelling of the word traitor.
Remo had bought the newspaper at the airport in Miami, taking it with him when he boarded his plane. He had dropped into the seat and opened up to the entertainment section. Forced to bum a pencil from a flight attendant because he'd forgotten to buy one of his own, he had settled down with the crossword puzzle on his knee and a very determined look on his face, and he got stuck on his very first word.
Traitor should be an easy word to spell. But from taxiing to takeoff, he just couldn't seem to get it right. Was it e-r or was it o-r? He wrote it a bunch of times in the margin around the otherwise blank crossword puzzle. He wrote it so many times that both versions were starting to look just as right to him.
The plane was flying over the Gulf of Mexico and Remo still hadn't gotten it. He decided that it was high time he got some help.
"Hi," Remo said enthusiastically to the passenger in the seat next to him. "Could you tell me the proper spelling of traitor?"
Diet Pepsi launched out both of the man's nostrils.
"What?" he gasped, nearly dropping his soda can.
"Traitor, " Remo repeated. "I can't seem to get it right." He held the newspaper out for inspection. Remo's seatmate saw the word in question. It was written in between every available column space and all around the margins of the paper. Over and over. In script, printed out. In capitals and in lowercase letters.
As he read that carefully written word, Alex Wycopf's world collapsed. His mind whirled. His nostrils burned from Pepsi. The knees of his white cotton pants where he'd spit his mouthful of soda were stained brown.
"You know how you get stuck on a word and you just can't seem to get it?" Remo asked. He smiled a disarmingly innocent smile.
"I ... what? Oh. Yes."
Alex Wycopf didn't know how he'd even managed to say that much. His blood sang a concert in his ears. For some reason his eyes were watering, even though he was too afraid even to cry. And through Wycopf's near-panic attack, the man sitting next to him continued to stare that vacant stare and smile that little knowing smile and hold out that scrap of paper with that incriminating word emblazoned a hundred times over for all the world to see.
"So do you?" Remo asked.
"Do I what?" asked Alex Wycopf, his face turning as white as a crisp sheet of first-grade notebook paper. "Do you know how to spell traitor?" Remo asked.
"Oh." Wycopf blinked. "Um, no. No, I don't."
Remo's face grew disappointed. "No? Oh." He returned to his crossword puzzle.
A passing flight attendant noticed that Alex had had some kind of trouble with his drink. He offered the shaken man a napkin to dry his pants before going off in search of a towel.
"I don't like traitors," Remo announced abruptly once the flight attendant was gone. "Whether or not they're with an e or an o. I happen to love America. Don't you love America?"
"I, um, sure," Alex Wycopf said. He was dabbing at the knees of his pants. His slick wet palms soaked the flimsy paper napkin.
"I don't mean as an angle or a dodge or a way of making a quick buck selling her out," Remo said. "I mean really love America. In the patriotic sense. That's the way I am." He tapped his pencil on his newspaper. "It's funny that I still do. I've seen so much over the years, you'd think my attitude would have changed. But I've been doing a little soulsearching these past few months and when I think about it-really think about it-I do still love America. Funny."
The flight attendant was back with a wet towel. Remo shifted in his seat, and the man cleaned the sticky soda off the back of the seat in front of Wycopf. He took a few swipes across the floor before retreating to the galley.
Alex Wycopf didn't know what to do. He just sat there looking dumbly ahead. He was staring at a rivet on the back of the seat in front of him. Suddenly that rivet was the most interesting thing on the face of the planet. Nothing else mattered-not the plane, not this trip, not his seatmate who somehow knew the truth even though no one should have.