"Greater good ...greater good ...greater good..." he muttered over and over as he rocked back and forth.
As Sunshiny attempted mouth-to-blowhole resuscitation, buckets of ocean water were hastily brought up in a futile attempt to revive the animal. To no avail.
The mood went from frantic to funereal. No one seemed to know what to do with the dead creature. A burial at sea seemed the most fitting, but someone argued that this was just a fancy term for dumping the poor creature overboard.
"These are the geniuses of the deep," Jerry wept. "We can't just chuck it out like garbage."
"If they're so smart, why do they keep getting caught in nets?" one timid Earthpeacer asked. The rest joined Sunshiny and Jerry in pelting the blasphemer with a dozen flapping, undersize tropical fish.
Afterward, they wrapped the dolphin's corpse in a spare Earthpeace flag and lowered it gently into the sea.
There was no joy aboard the transformed Radiant Grappler II after this incident. The dark mood remained with the crew like a stubborn black cloud on the remainder of their uneventful trip across the Atlantic.
Chapter 16
The summer sun was dying long and slow across the reddening New York sky. As the afternoon blurred into dusk, a palpable sense of loss seemed to rise with the gloaming-the sort of wistful malaise that began to set in on the last full month before the start of autumn and the winter it presaged.
A soft breeze off Long Island Sound touched the shadow-smeared leaves of ancient oak and maple. Alone in the drab confines of his Folcroft office, Harold W. Smith noticed neither the sigh of leaf nor the encroaching darkness.
Fingers moved with perfect efficiency of motion, striking silent keys. Smith was lost in his element. As he surfed the Net, page after electronic page reflected in his owlish glasses.
For the moment, he had put aside his greater concerns. Even so, while it was not yet an actual crisis, it remained a far worse potential crisis than any he'd ever faced.
The situation as it was playing out was clearly an unfortunate quirk of fate, rather than part of some deliberate scheme.
The former President hit his head and regained his memory of CURE. An ecoterrorist group saw the opportunity his hospitalization presented and abducted him. The group ruthlessly seized the moment, oblivious to the damning potential of the information that had surfaced in the ex-President's mind.
A series of unfortunate coincidences. Nothing more.
Under other circumstances, Smith might have hesitated to use Remo and Chiun against Earthpeace. After all, other agencies would certainly be involved in the search. They would find him eventually. And even if they did not, well, the truth was that, lamentably, ex-Presidents were expendable.
But the CURE information this President possessed made this situation unique. In having the President, Earthpeace had CURE. Whether they realized it now or not.
A potentially disastrous situation. Smith had tried for several hours to put it from his mind as he worked, with varying degrees of success. At the moment, as he studied his monitor, concern had been eclipsed by confusion.
At his keyboard, Smith paused.
"Odd," he said quietly. So engrossed was he with the information on the computer screen he did not realize he had spoken the word aloud.
On the monitor buried below the dark surface of the desk was a photograph. Taken from a satellite, it showed the area of the Atlantic where the Earthpeace flagship should now be, given its reported course and likely speed.
But the Grappler wasn't there.
At best, the Radiant Grappler II wasn't due in Cape Town for another twenty-nine hours. Remo would arrive before that. All any of them could do in the meantime was wait.
To fill the idle time, Smith had been doing research on the Earthpeace organization. At the same time, he had logged on to a military satellite in geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic. Efficient to a fault, Smith wanted to be certain the ship was on schedule. He farmed out the task of actually locating the Grappler to the CIA.
It was a procedure he had used in the past. Analysts at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, were assigned the job of finding the Earthpeace ship by some unknown superior. Taking a break from his own work, Smith had just checked the satellite images to see if the CIA had made any progress.
They had not.
Smith's gray eyes were hooded by his frowning brow as he studied the latest real-time image. There were red circles on the map. Tiny boatslike miniature bathtub toys-threw up frothy wakes of white within the small circles. Some of the vessels were labeled. None was the Grappler.
"Very odd," Smith said aloud.
This time, he realized he had spoken the words to his empty office.
Smith leaned away from the computer. He adjusted his glasses with one hand, even as he tapped the other on his desk.
They should have found the ship by now. He had issued the order almost two hours ago.
It was taking far too long. Even by CIA standards. Even if it was traveling at half speed, they should have found the Earthpeace vessel by now.
Assuming it was where it was supposed to be. A fresh tug of concern.
Empty belly grumbling, Smith leaned forward, his chair creaking. A scrambled phone line gained him entry to Langley. The young voice that answered was bored, but efficient. A low-level functionary not yet disinterested enough in his work to be indolent. "Imaging analysis."
"This is General Smith," the CURE director said, using the cover ID that had gained him access to both the military satellite and the CIA. "To whom am I speaking?"
The voice grew tighter, bored tone fleeing. "Mark Howard, General. I'm afraid you're not going to be happy with what I've got."
Though he labored to subdue it, Smith's worry deepened.
"Explain."
"We've searched the corridor you gave us, but we're coming up empty. There is no ship remotely resembling the Radiant Grappler in Atlantic waters from Antigua to the Cape of Good Hope."
"Is it possible you are in error?"
"No, sir," Howard insisted. "The Grappler isn't an ordinary tug. It's as big as a small cruise liner. If she was there, there'd be no missing her."
"Widen the search parameters," Smith instructed.
"We have. Three times already. I'm sorry, General, but your boat isn't out there."
Smith thought of the former U.S. President. Held captive on a phantom ship, lost somewhere in the Atlantic. Even now, he could be speaking to his abductors about CURE.
"Widen them again," Smith ordered with forced restraint.
"You know, General, Spacetrack probably followed that ship through the Panama Canal. It might be smarter to review their older satellite photos to get a positive locate on her. Like, say, from six hours ago. If she veered off any other way, we could extrapolate a route from there. Maybe."
Smith pursed his thin lips. "Do it," he said.
"The satellite I'm using now is real-time. I'll need current Spacetrack access and the full day's records."
Smith entered some rapid commands into his computer.