Mark straightened, a determined cast to his soft jaw. "Then I'll fly to Maine and warn them."
"You would not reach them in time," Smith said. "They are already on the ground there."
Standing beside Smith's desk, Mark Howard felt a surge of impotent frustration. He clenched and unclenched his hands, unsure what to do.
Outside, night had taken firm hold. The grounds beyond Smith's one-way picture window had been swallowed up by an impenetrable cloak of blackness.
"There must be something we can do," Howard insisted.
Smith nodded. "Yes, there is," he said. Still seated, the older man looked up over the tops of his rimless glasses. "We will remain at Folcroft and use CURE's resources to uncover who at NASA is responsible for the events in Florida. Someone there has been directing Gordons in the guise of the Virgil probe. If Remo and Chiun succeed in Maine, we will send them back to Florida to deal with his accomplices."
"And if they fail?" Howard asked.
Smith didn't miss a beat. "Then CURE will be without its enforcement arm and you will have gotten your wish."
Turning from his subordinate, he began typing swiftly at his computer keyboard.
Smith's words were not said as a rebuke. Still, they stung. Mark was at a loss for words. He turned woodenly.
Feeling the weight of his own earlier suggestion on his broad shoulders, Mark Howard quietly left the office.
Chapter 23
The darkness through which he fell was complete. There wasn't so much as a trace of light for his eyes to absorb.
Slipping through this shaft of utter darkness, Chiun kept his arms bent slightly, his fingers extended.
He didn't know what to expect. When the trapdoor had opened beneath him in the secret passage upstairs, he couldn't move out of the way quickly enough. It was the same strange sense he and Remo had gotten from the falling chandelier. There had been no triggering of hinges or hasps. It was as if the trapdoor had made the decision to open up and swallow him entirely of its own volition.
As he rocketed through empty space, a sudden pressure against his eardrums told him something flat and solid was racing up toward his feet. The tube was sealed.
He expected to drop onto the invisible floor, but the instant before he hit, the ink-black tube through which he was plunging split like a yawning mouth. Dim light flooded the tunnel. Chiun caught a flash of a slick black wall as he was spit from the tube. Free, he plunged out into open air.
Chiun's kimono became a billowing parachute as he floated to the dirt floor. On landing, his sandal soles made not so much as a single scuff.
He quickly scanned his surroundings.
He had fallen into the basement. The high brick walls were ancient. Icicles of dry mortar hung from between the bricks.
The room in which he'd fallen appeared to be sealed. There was no sign of window or door.
The floor beneath his feet was level, but two yards off it began to slope rapidly downward into a separate alcove. Shadows drenched the farthest recesses of this pit.
There were no signs of life anywhere in the room. Still, his experiences thus far in this strange house were enough that he would not trust all to be as it should.
Senses straining alertness, Chiun turned to the nearest wall. He hadn't taken a single step toward it when he detected sudden movement behind him.
He wheeled around.
From the darkness of the alcove a long, low figure was slithering into view. Dark and menacing, it moved swiftly on short legs across the dirt floor.
A second creature emerged behind it, followed by a third. Elongated mouths smiled rows of viciously sharp teeth. As powerful jaws opened and closed experimentally, the darting beasts lashed the air with fat, pointed tails.
Chiun took a cautious step back from the familiar shapes.
The creatures advancing on him appeared to be crocodiles. But appearance alone was deceiving. That these were not ordinary crocodiles was apparent to the Master of Sinanju. For one thing there were no life signs emanating from them. And though they made a good pantomime of living motion, their movements nonetheless were more jerky than the real thing. Their squat legs shot into the floor like fired pistons, propelling them forward. There was not the grace natural to all living things.
Even as the animals crept toward him, Chiun demonstrated his contempt by tucking his hands inside his kimono sleeves.
Raising his wattled neck, he addressed the four walls.
"Fools," he spit, his voice dripping scorn. "Your mechanized beasts are no match for Sinanju."
His words brought an odd reaction from the crocs. All three animals stopped dead in their tracks. With agonizing slowness, the lead animal raised its head, looking up at him. Deep within its shiny dark eyes came a click and a whir. Chiun had no doubt that whoever was controlling the beasts was looking at him now.
Artificial eyes trained square on Chiun, the crocodile's mechanical mouth opened wide. The old Korean saw that the rows of white teeth were sharper than any knife blade.
Jaw locked open, the creature paused. For a moment Chiun thought that it might have broken down. But all at once a tinny sound issued from the black depths of its mouth, like a poorly reproduced recording of an old radio show.
"Hello is all right," said the crocodile. And far back along its powerful jaws, its mouth curved up toward its eyes in a parody of a human smile.
Standing above the beast, Chiun felt his very marrow freeze to solid ice. Hazel eyes opened wide in shock.
And in that moment of stunned amazement, the crocodile darted forward, its machine jaws clamping shut around Chiun's exposed ankle with the force of a snapping bear trap.
REMO GAVE UP trying to attack the walls. If he had more room to negotiate in the ever narrowing chamber, he might have been able to break through. As it was, the only dents he had succeeded in making had quickly healed themselves.
The rear wall of the secret passage continued to slowly close in behind him. He was now only a few seconds from being crushed. But a few seconds was all he needed.
Far down the corridor the red eye of the security camera continued to watch dispassionately.
On the floor around Remo's feet were a few of the chunks of paneling that were left after he'd forced his way inside the chamber. With the toe of his loafer, he drew the longest one toward him.
"First thing," Remo snarled. Leaning sideways, he scooped up the wooden fragments. "I don't like an audience."
His hand snapped out. The chunk of wood whistled down to the far end of the narrowing corridor.
The dart pierced the lens and the camera burst apart in a spray of white sparks.
Behind him the compressing wall creaked as if in response. He felt it begin to move in faster.
Remo released more breath, deflating his lungs. He'd have to work fast.
Whoever had designed this place might not have been very creative. They had gotten Chiun with the floor and they intended to get Remo with the walls, but it was possible they had left one avenue open.
Thrusting his hands straight up, Remo hopped off the floor, curling his fingers over the upper edge of the wall.