"Remo, it's very important that we recover the nebulizer."
"To you and me both. I could have strangled Chiun when I woke up from that nerve chop. The sooner I end this thing, the sooner Chiun and I can have it out about going back to Sinanju."
"Have you any leads?"
"When Chiun is finished, I'm going to work these people over myself I'll come up with something."
"Keep me informed."
"Say the magic word," Remo said airily.
"Please."
"Thank you." And Remo hung up.
Smith's thoughts were more troubled than ever. The death of Ferris D'Orr would not be easy to explain to the President, but if the nebulizer were recovered, it would salvage the situation.
Unfortunately, Smith could not report the nebulizer's recovery just yet. Another man in his position might have been tempted to wait a day or two to report in the hopes of giving his superior more positive news. Not Smith. Even if it meant his removal from CURE-a possibility, given the failure to protect Ferris D'Orr-Smith would not shirk his immediate duty.
Without hesitation, he picked up the red phone. Almost as rapidly, he replaced it.
The CURE computer terminal had beeped twice, a signal of urgent incoming data.
Smith turned to the console, all thought of the President evaporating from his mind.
The computer told of a murder in the sleepy town of Mount Olive in North Carolina. A man named Harold Q. Smith, age sixty-two, had been murdered. He was found on the stoop of his home, his head lopped off as if by a guillotine. Police were investigating. The man had no known enemies, and there were no obvious suspects.
Smith punched up his tactical map of the United States and added the name of Harold Q. Smith to the list of Smith victims, now numbering fourteen, He added the place of death, and the number fourteen appeared within the borders of North Carolina, corresponding to the locale of Mount Olive.
Smith hit a key and a green line zipped between the locale of the last Harold Smith killing, Oakham, Massachusetts, and Mount Olive. The line was long, straight, and paralleled the east coast. It went through lower New England and New York State, right past Long Island and Rye, New York.
The killer had bypassed him. Completely.
Smith wondered if he had made a mistake in calculating the killer's methods. Perhaps he was not traveling by road, as Smith had surmised. Possibly he was not selecting his targets by telephone listings either.
It should have been a relief. It was not.
It injected a maddening note of randomness to what Harold Smith had, with his rational mind, perceived as a logical system. If the killer was deviating into another pattern, Smith, in the long run, remained the probable target.
The agony of waiting could be prolonged indefinitely. Smith groaned inwardly, and settling himself, prepared to attack this new factor with all his rational skill.
Harold Q. Smith had heard a knock at his front door.
He was watching a football game, in which his team was leading by three points in the fourth quarter. He was not happy at being interrupted, and so went to the door grumbling.
The girl standing on the porch was young and very pretty. Smith had never seen her before, and because Mount Olive was a college town, he automatically assumed she was a student. Maybe she was here to sell him a magazine. Sometimes the students did that for spending money.
The girl smiled sweetly. and Smith's bad mood went away. She had that kind of smile.
"Hi! Are you Harold Q. Smith?"
"That's right, young lady."
"I have a friend of yours in my van."
"Friend?"
"Yes, he'd like to speak with you."
"Well," said Harold Q. Smith slowly, thinking of his football game, "tell him to come in."
"Oh, he can't," Ilsa said sadly. "He can't walk, poor thing."
"Oh," said Harold Q. Smith. "I suppose I have to go to him."
"Would you?"
Smith would, and did.
The blood girl hauled open the side door. Harold Q. Smith stuck his head in before stepping up into the van and saw the most hideous face he had ever seen. Ever.
The face belonged to a body covered to the neck in blankets. An old man. Very old, with tiny ears and bright black eyes. His body didn't seem to make a normal outline under the rough cloth.
"Smith!" the man hissed.
"Do I know you?"
Then Smith felt the gun in his back. He did not have to turn around to know it was a gun. In fact, he didn't think it would be a good idea to turn around at all.
"Inside," the blond girl said, her voice no longer sounding of honey and sunshine.
Smith stepped up. He had to bend over to stand in the cramped interior. It was okay, though, because it made the fall when the girl clubbed him over the head that much shorter.
"I have waited for this moment, Harold Q. Smith," Konrad Blutsturz intoned. "Forty years, I have waited."
"I think he's out."
"Eh?"
"He can't hear you," said Ilsa. "I guess I knocked him out. Sorry."
"Bah!" spat Konrad Blutsturz. "It does not matter. He is not the right Smith and I am too weary to kill him. Drag him back to his porch and shoot him there."
"Can I cut his head off instead?" Ilsa asked, eyeing the curved blade from Blutsturz' blue left arm.
"They gush when their heads are cut off," Blutsturz warned.