"I'm leaving," said Remo. "Gotta go. Business."
"Where?" said Kathy, suddenly realizing that he was actually leaving her. She shivered under the shock, her hands tight and trembling.
"Gonna save the world, sweetheart. So long," said Remo.
"What about saving the world from the destruction of the ozone shield? That's saving the world."
"That's number two. Disasters nowadays have to wait in line."
"How can it be number two? It can make the entire world unlivable."
"Not right away," said Remo. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and headed for an Aeroflot office. The way Smith had set this up, there was a chance, a fair chance, that even Sinanju might fail. In his effort to save the country, he had all but told Russia that he was sending a man in.
"Thanks a lot," Remo had said when he heard the plan the President of the United States had approved. "But how do you expect me to come out of this alive?"
"You can do anything, it seems, Remo."
"Except what you set up for me. You're going to get me killed."
"We have to risk that."
"Thanks."
"Look, Remo. If you don't make it, none of us will make it."
"Then kiss your bippee good-bye."
"You'll make it, Remo," said Smith.
Remo had given a little laugh and hung up. That was before he kissed Kathy good-bye and before he went to the Aeroflot office. He had looked at a picture of the crude Aeroflot jet, remembered how many men Russia was willing to lose in the Second World War, and then slowly backed away. Very slowly. He could not use that plane.
Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell watched Remo leave. She waited, believing that he would return. She told herself that he was playing a joke on her, a cruel joke. He would come back and she would insist that he never play that joke on her again.
Do anything he wanted to her, she would plead, but not that. Never leave her like that again. Several men stopped to talk to her, seeing she was alone. A few pimps at the airport offered her work.
When she let out a scream that halted everyone at the baggage racks, she acknowledged that he had done it. He had actually left her.
Someone tried to quiet her. She poked her nails into his eyes. Airport police came running. She poked them, too. They wrestled her into a straitjacket. Someone gave her a sedative. With the chemicals heavily drugging her mind, she felt only a roaring, all-consuming hate. Even drugged, she was planning her revenge.
Someone found her passport on her body. They wondered how she had just gotten a British entry stamp, without the debarkation stamp from their customs.
She told them a story. She told them several stories. She got Reemer Bolt on the telephone. Bolt's voice cracked as he was trying to explain that everything was not lost.
Kathy told him to contact the lawyers of Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts. She told him to contact her banker. She told him how much money to wire. She told him to get her out of there. She told him the magic words: "Everything is going to be all right, Reemer."
"Of course, but how?"
"I am taking over," she said.
"Your project? Your responsibility?"
"Of course, Reemer."
"You are the most wonderful woman in the world," said Reemer Bolt, realizing there was a way out of this mess.
Thus when the technicians started complaining later that day that Dr. D'Donnell was going to destroy the world, Reemer Bolt had little sympathy for them.
Kathy, returning on the first flight back east, had stormed into Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts and, without even a change of clothes, begun ordering the technicians around.
Bolt happily endorsed everything. But soon the technicians began sneaking out of the beam generator station with tales of what was going on.
"Mr. Bolt, did you know that she has placed a locked wide arc on the beam?"
"No. Frankly, I don't care," said Bolt. "It's Dr. O'Donnell's project, and what she does with it is her business. I tried to save it with marketing directions, but I don't know if I can do anything now."
Then another technician entered Reemer Bolt's office. "Did you know she is building a second beam generator?"
"Thank you for telling me," said Bolt, and promptly began preparing a memo from him to Kathy with another copy to the board of directors. That memo would suggest that they first make one beam generator feasible before they invest in another.
All the technicians came in on the next one:
"Did you know that she is doing a central eclipse with a locked perpendicular arc on the second generator?"
"No, I didn't," said Bolt with great thoughtfulness. "But I do resent your coming to me with tales about another officer of this corporation. Underhandedness is not the way Reemer Bolt likes to do business."
"Well, for one thing, if she turns on that second generator, none of us is going to be able to get out alive."
"What about the radiation suits?"
"They're only good for standing near it. And the arc she's going to set up for that second one can wipe out all life from here to Boston."
"Keep up the good work," said Bolt, who immediately set about establishing a Rhode Island branch of the corporation, something he was going to have to do before she turned on the second beam.
In the laboratories Kathy O'Donnell heard all the complaints. The technicians' objections became increasingly shrill. And she cared not a whit for any of these people. She hardly even heard them. She didn't even enjoy the obvious suffering of one of the technicians as he described the horror she could inflict on the world with these changes and additions to the program.
Kathy O'Donnell did not care. Remo had left her.
Everyone was going to pay for it, especially Remo.
Chapter 17
Ironically, it was Chiun's understanding of Russia that might get Remo killed. Smith had no choice. That was the horror of these great events. Everyone was really helpless to do anything but try to avoid the megadeaths they all faced.
Smith had wanted Chiun to penetrate Russia. Even now he would rather have launched Chiun into Russia than Remo. But Remo was all he had. No one knew where Chiun was or what he was doing. Smith reviewed what Chiun knew about Russia. Smith had made the correct move. The rest of the government was wrong.
Chiun, in some strange way, read the Russians like children read comic books. It was all clear to him. Every move that seemed baffling and threatening to the West was like a colorful, unmistakably simple design to Chiun.