"Why?" Smith asked.
"Because she would have talked. She talked too much. You can have cranks around when you're starting up and all you're doing is talking. But when you get to action, to doing things, those people are dangerous."
"The revolution eats its own children," Smith said softly. "When did you know it was me?"
"A few minutes ago. I called the computer at Du Lac College. It said that you were the spy in Earth Goodness. What are you? CIA? FBI?"
"None of those," Smith said. "Why-do they call you B?"
"You know about that," she said with some surprise.
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"I should have known. From the moment you came aboard, all we've had is confusion and death and disorder. I should have known it was you."
"Why do they call you B?"
"Bunny. A childhood nickname," she said.
"I thought it meant Birdie. Feldmar," he said.
She shook her head. "She was too stupid to be real. With her antics, marching around those lunatic college children, as if they counted for anything."
She rose to her feet. The robe hung open over her opulent body. She dropped the knife in front of her on the floor and extended her arms toward Smith and came across the room to him.
"We can still have it," she said. "We can have it all."
She smiled, and Smith remembered where he had seen that smile. It was in a French farmhouse, and the girl who had smiled had been responsible for the deaths of fifteen of Smith's men. She had smiled too, and Smith had killed her.
He concentrated on the smile, and he hesitated, and Mildred Pensiotte's smile grew wider. Her hands reached to her waist and pulled her robe open wide.
The smile. The dead weren't smiling. They were in St. Martin's and Washington, and they would be all over if this woman had her way.
She smiled again and Smith smiled back.
And fired his revolver.
"Good-bye, Bunny," Smith said.
Back in his mid-town office at Earth Goodness, Inc., Smith again called the Folcroft computers.
He punched his code into the triggering device, then signaled: "WHAT HOOKUP OF DU LAC COMPUTER WITH OTHER MAJOR SYSTEMS?"
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The computer reported back: "SYSTEM HOOKED BY MICROWAVE TO CUBAN OFFICE OF KGB."
Smith paused a moment. The Russians had been behind the plot to kill the president. Mildred Pensiotte and, to a lesser degree, Robin Feldmar, had been Soviet plants, spies working in this country to help overthrow it. The awful thing, he thought, was probably that no one would ever know.
He directed the computers: "VACUUM DU LAC," then entered his code and hung up. In moments, he knew, the giant Folcroft computers would be sweeping clean all the memories from the Du Lac computers. Who knew what might be in those files? There might be some little bit of information that one day might provide him with leverage he might not otherwise have in dealing with America's enemies.
He looked up a number in his wallet and dialed.
The secretary of the interior answered the telephone himself. He was sleepy, and his voice was thick with exhaustion.
"Yes?" he said.
"This is Smith. Tell the president it's safe to come home."
He hung up and thought again of Remo and Chiun. There they were, off, gallivanting around on a vacation, leaving it to him to protect America and the free world. They'd hear about it when they got back. They'd hear what a hell of a nerve they had leaving all the dirty work for Smith while they were off disporting themselves.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Dutchman groveled on all fours, muttering. "You promised me, Nuihc. You said . . . you said ..."
Remo approached him like a man whose soul had died. His eyes were blank, his face expressionless. He stopped in front of the Dutchman and kicked him in the throat.
The Dutchman rolled over, startled.
"Get up," Remo said. Before the Dutchman could rise, Remo kicked him again.
"I have no quarrel with you," the blond man rasped.
"Think of one." Remo slapped him flat across the face.
The Dutchman stood to full height. "Don't do this," he warned. "I am trying-"
Remo sent two jabs to the man's belly. "I don't care if you fight me or not," Remo said quietly. "As long as 1 hurt you." He slammed an elbow into the man's hip, which sent the Dutchman sprawling.
A mist appeared instantly, settling over the landscape. The hills softened into pastel domes, like melting ice cream.
"And you can save the artwork, too. I know where you are."
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"Do you?" the voice came from behind him. Remo turned. Five identical figures, all the Dutchman, peered at him through the fog. "Where am I, Remo?"
The five figures disappeared. Another materialized beside him. Remo swung at it. It faded into smoke. "Or am I everywhere?" In a flash of light, the ice cream mountain-tops glowed in phosphorescent colors. On the peak of each stood the Dutchman, hundreds of him, like tiny paper cutouts.
Remo stood still and watched. There were no birds in the sky. The fields were quiet. The Dutchman was real, he told himself, no matter how many figments of himself he could produce. And that one real being moved on two legs like anyone else. Remo shifted his eyes out of focus and concentrated entirely on his peripheral vision.
Through the fog, to the right of Remo, a figure ran, crouching. He moved swiftly and silently, using all the skill of a lifetime of training. He climbed the highest hill in the area, stopping behind a large dead tree.
Another figment appeared directly beside Remo, prepared to strike. Remo clenched his jaws and walked through it. He had things to do now.