"I trusted him," said Consuelo. "He tried to get us killed."
"And I saved you, sweetheart. So who are you going to trust?"
"I hope you're right, Remo. But what's going to happen to the Nuclear Control Agency? We've got to report this to someone."
"I've got bad news for you," said Remo, steadying himself. "We are the someone."
"Who are you?"
"Never mind. Just take my word for it. Nothing else has worked so far."
"Why should I take your word for it?"
"Because everyone else has been trying to kill you," said Remo.
Harold W. Smith, through the organization's hidden contacts, had arranged for a special tally to be set up for calculating how much enriched uranium was being stolen. It was a rough estimate but reliable. All the enriched uranium used by legal sources was compared to all that was manufactured. The difference was how much was stolen.
The President had called this the first significant handle on the extent of the problem. But the day the President called the Folcroft Sanitarium to ask how many bombs could be made from the deficit uranium, Harold Smith gave him the most significant handle of all. "In tonnages?"
"In how much of a city could be destroyed."
"Whoever has stolen the uranium could make enough bombs. . ." said Harold Smith, pausing to jot a few notes down on a pad, "to destroy the east coast and island as far as St. Louis."
There was a pause from the presidential end. "Has the uranium gone overseas?"
"No indication of that, sir," said Smith.
"Then you believe it is still in the United States?"
"I believe we don't know, sir."
"So what you are telling me is that enough uranium has been stolen from us to destroy most of our major cities, and we don't have any idea what has happened to it? I mean how can they get it out of the country without setting off a million and one detectors? That's what I want to know."
"I don't think they can."
"Then the uranium is here."
"We don't know that, sir."
"What do you know? I mean, I want you to understand you are the country's last resort. What are those special two doing?"
"They are on it, sir."
"It would be nice if they got to it before half the country went up."
"They are close, I think."
"How do you know?"
"Because they have located the probable source."
"What I want to know is how uranium can be stolen from us without the Nuclear Control Agency knowing where it went."
"I think they did. They are the ones who top the suspect list so far."
"But what are they doing with it? They have all the uranium we make."
"Maybe they're selling it."
"To get us all blown up? They'll go with the rest of us."
"I don't know, sir, but I think we are quite close to finding out."
"That is the first good news I have had on this thing," said the President.
Harold W. Smith swiveled in his chair to face the lonely reaches of Long Island Sound, viewed through the one-way glass of his office.
"Yessir," he said. The President hung up. Smith looked at his watch. There had been a brief contact the day before when Remo and Chiun had returned to America. Remo had informed him of the NCA. Smith had asked if Remo wanted any backup information. Remo had answered he didn't. He felt it might only get in the way.
This, of course, meant more bodies. Smith had been almost tempted to tell him to wait for backup information. There had been so many bodies in so many places. But the figures were too ominous to ignore. All he had said was, "Fine."
And he had asked for a callback to verify success. He had given a time. He did not know where they would be. Chiun had recently taken a liking to this system. It gave him the opportunity to destroy those telephones that did not work.
According to Remo, what Chiun hated most about the telephone was the insolent servants of the wire who refused to pay him respect. He had called the American telephone system "a warren of insulting vermin." He was referring, of course, to operators.
When Smith had explained that the system used to work very well, Chiun had demanded to know what had happened.
"Someone decided to fix it," Smith had answered.
"And he was beheaded?" Chiun asked.
"No. It was a court. A court of judges that made the ruling."
"And were they beheaded?"
"No. They are judges."
"But what do you do when the judges do wrong, when they create such a dastardly warren of vermin who feel free to insult and hang up, who are rude and stupid?"
"Nothing. They are judges."
"Oh, Emperor Smith, are you not emperor or soon to be?"
This was a common question from the Oriental who never understood democracy, or laws. The House of Sinanju had only dealt with kings and tyrants before, and Chiun did not believe anything else existed.
So there was no real answer to Chiun's question that would get anyone anywhere.