Then he called just Folks Airlines and got a cheerful recording saying that if he really wanted to talk to someone, he should hold. He waited through three long selections of Muzak, made even longer because it was the music of Barry Manilow, before a female voice broke through with a crackle.
"Just Folks, the friendly, SAFE airline," she said.
"I'd like to speak to Mr. A. H. Baynes, please," Smith said.
"I'm sorry, but Mr. Baynes is unavailable."
"Is this his office?"
"No, this is the reservations desk at the airport."
"Then how do you know he's unavailable?"
"Do you think a millionaire like A. H. Baynes would be standing here getting varicose veins and hawking tickets for poverty wages?"
"Would you please connect me with his office?" Smith said.
"Mr. Baynes's office," another female said. Her voice had the steel edge of the executive secretary.
"Mr. Baynes, please. This is the Securities and Exchange Commission calling."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Baynes isn't in."
"Where can I reach him? This is an urgent matter."
"I'm afraid I can't tell you," she said, the flinty voice mellowing with a kind of desperation. "He's away on personal business."
"Now? With the crisis in air travel?" Smith said.
"At Just Folks, there is no crisis," the secretary said levelly.
"Does he call in for messages?"
"Occasionally. Do you want to leave one?"
"No," Smith said, and hung up.
He realized he was alone. No Remo. No Chiun. And the clock was ticking away on CURE. But he knew Baynes had something to do with the airline killings. He knew it.
He would have to find Baynes. And he would have to do it alone.
Chapter Seventeen
Remo sat on the edge of the bed in the New Orleans motel room, his elbows braced on his knees, his hands covering his face. Why was he in New Orleans?
He didn't know. He had come on his own, walking, hitchhiking, following road by road, following something he could not explain or understand.
Where was Chiun? Chiun would understand. He knew about the Kali business. It had seemed to Remo like a fairy tale when he had first heard it-the hopeless fantasy of an old man who believed too strongly in legends-but Remo wasn't sure anymore. Something had brought him to this shabby room on this dark street. Something had pulled him all the miles from Denver to here.
The worst of it was that he could feel its influence growing inside him. There was something dark and alien and frightening right under his skin. That something that had compelled him to shame himself with that blond girl in a public alley. A normal man, burning up the way Remo was, might run amok and kill someone. But what of someone with Remo's strength and killing techniques? How many would he kill? How much damage could he do?
It was a nightmare and there was no way Remo could wake from it. Little by little, he had given in.
From his first tentative steps outside the hotel room in Denver, he had convinced himself that he was only going for a walk around the city streets. He had told himself, very calmly and logically, that he couldn't very well wait inside a closed room for the days or even weeks that it might take Chiun to return.
Reason was on his side and Chiun's story about Master Lu and the talking stone goddess was unreasonable. He would have been a fool to hide out for fear of a silly legend. So he walked out of his hotel room in Denver, and his reason told him that it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But something in the back of his mind knew better.
In the old days, before he knew of Harold Smith or CURE, when he was just a foot cop walking a beat in Newark, New Jersey, Remo had tried to quit smoking. The ritual occurred every year: he would stop cold, filled with righteous willpower and a sense of mastery over his own impulses. Then, generally after a week, he would allow himself one cigarette. It was nothing, one cigarette. His reason told him so. He didn't even enjoy the one cigarette. But it always marked the end of his good intentions, and even though his reason told him that one single cigarette was harmless, his inner mind knew the truth: that he was a smoker once again.
And so when he left the hotel room in Denver, he wrote the Korean characters for "going" in yellow chalk on the outside of the hotel building. He had marked it on two other places in Denver and sporadically throughout his journey, throwing out crumbs of bread for Chiun to follow.
Because he knew in the back of his mind that he was already lost.
Chiun, come find me. He clenched his hands into two fists and held them in front of him, shaking. The lust was growing within him. It, the thing, Kali, whatever. It wanted him to move. His destination was near. He had known it when he reached the dark street in New Orleans. The force inside him had grown so great that it had taken all his effort to fight it and duck into this seedy hotel with no bedspread, a battered television set strewn with wires, and only a thin yellow hand towel in the bathroom.
There was a telephone too. If he'd had a friend, he would have called just to listen to a voice. A voice might keep him sane. But assassins had no friends. Only victims.
He stood up. He was bathed in sweat and his breath was labored and rasping.
He had to get out. He had to breathe. It was only reasonable.
"What's happening to me?" he shouted aloud. The sound reverberated through the silent room. It wanted him out. It wanted him to come. It, with its sickly-sweet smell and arms of death.
He smashed his fist through the mirror. His image splintered into a thousand pieces and flew in all directions. With a sob, he sat down.
"Get it together. Calm down." He spoke the words softly, gently. He smoothed his hands together until their violent trembling stilled. He turned on the battered television.
"The victims of the most recent wave of airline killings which struck Air Europa earlier this week are still turning up in Paris," the announcer said.
Remo moaned and listened.
"The bodies of three prominent Denver-area residents were found early this morning in a public park near Neuilly, France, a suburb of Paris. They were identified as Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Palmer and Mrs. A. H. Baynes, wife of the president of just Folks Airlines. Apparently she was traveling with her two children, Joshua and Kimberly Baynes, whose whereabouts are still unknown."
"Oh, God," Remo said. It had been his job to stop the airline killings. His job.
How long had it been since he had given a thought to his job, to his responsibilities, to his country? He felt sick. He knew what to do now. He had to go back to work. He had to forget this force that was pulling him away.
He reached for the telephone and began to dial the complex routing code that would eventually connect him with Harold Smith.
The connections were slow. His hand strayed to replace the receiver, but he forced himself to hold on, knowing that It wanted him to hang up. It wanted him alone. For herself.
When Smith pulled into the driveway of his home, he thought about the letter he had meant to write to his wife. Like all the other letters he had planned to write her, it had not been written. And perhaps he would never have the chance again.
He was no fool. The President's phone call had been his last warning to CURE. Unless Smith could do something about the air deaths, the next communication from the White House would be to disband. And with Remo gone, with Chiun gone, Smith had no illusions. He might return empty-handed, and that would be the end of CURE, and of Harold W. Smith.
He owned Irma a good-bye.