"What the hell is that?"
Remo whispered, "Maybe one of those California fruitcake things. You know, clapping one hand in a hot tub and finding your soul through masturbation."
"What do you think he's doing here?"
"Sitting on the mountain top and contemplating the meaning of eternity," Remo said.
Stacy nodded. "Yeah, that's probably it. He doesn't
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look like our killer anyway. But he shouldn't be trespassing."
"No, but who's he going to hurt?" Remo asked. Chiun turned and walked away. Stacy watched the tiny figure just turning around the mountain at the next cutback. "I guess you're right," Stacy said. "Who could he hurt?"
Remo shrugged.
Alpha Camp was two smallish greenhouses, a motor pool, a sprinkling of one-room log cabins, and a good-sized A-frame, like the kind that Angelenos build by the hundreds anywhere their gas-guzzlers can take them to escape urban congestion for a weekend.
The moon had come out, and snow had been falling for fifteen minutes when the Jeep wagon pulled into the camp. Stacy got out first and led Remo into the A-frame.
The sloping wooden walls of the house were covered with Indian blankets. There were two bearskins on the floor and comfortable-looking stuffed chairs and sofas. In the center of the left wall was a fireplace, and opposite the hearth a small kitchenette. Most of the structure was open from floor to rafter beams, but in the back of the A-frame were four private closed-in rooms, two stacked on top of two.
"Wait here, O'Sullivan, while I go find Dr. Webb and Brack," said Stacy.
"O'Sylvan," Remo corrected.
Stacy seemed to ignore that, and Remo reached out and squeezed his right bicep.
"O'Sylvan," he said again.
"Yes, you're quite right,"'Stacy said. "O'Sylvan, not O'Sullivan."
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"Thank you," Remo said. He released Stacy's arm. "My name means a lot to me."
Stacy walked away from Remo and knocked on the door of the bottom left-hand room. A growling answered his knock and Stacy entered the room.
While the door was opening and closing, Remo heard a sound in the air, a sound that shouldn't have been there. It was a kind of combination of a dozen jet engines and an equal number of giant fans. Even after the door closed, Remo sighted his ears in on the sound, isolating it, trying to place it. To most people, the noise would not even have been audible, but more than a decade of Chiun's training had changed that for Remo. His nervous system was no longer that of a man's; instead, it was something far more refined, and compared with an average man's the way an average man's compared with an earthworm's.
The sound must be coming from somewhere behind the A frame, outdoors. It was even more difficult to tell what was making the noise. Remo put it out of his mind and sprawled out in one of the chairs.
A few moments later, he heard the door behind him open and close. Three pairs of feet started across the room toward him. No one spoke. For an instant, Remo considered the possibility that they were planning to attack him, but he quickly rejected the idea. One set of footsteps came from a woman. Another set, a heavier walk, came from a man obviously in too much pain to even walk correctly, much less attack. The third pair— Stacy's—were different: skittish and agressive at the same time, the type that would attack only when forced to by fright.
"Mr. O'Sylvan?"
The voice was a girl's. Remo turned to face her. She
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was tall, curvy, and pretty in a Norman Rockwell-tomboy sort of way. Her hair was bright, carrot-red, her eyes were blue, and her face was covered with freckles. She was wearing skintight jeans that revealed long, slender, well-muscled legs and a firm, high, rounded rear. Her breasts were large and looked firm.
Remo smiled into her eyes and she tried to smile back.
"You're Dr. Webb?" he asked.
She offered him her hand, and he shook it. Stacy hung back, like a shy, lovesick teenager.
"Call me Joey," she said, still holding on to his hand.
"I'm Remo," he said.
"That's a very unusual name," she said.
Remo smiled at her again. Smith's taste in foster daughters impressed him.
"I wouldn't know," he said. "I've had it all my Ufe."
"Where'd your parents get it?"
"I don't know. I don't remember. They both died when I was very young."
Joey Webb caught her breath.
"That's very interesting," she said. "I was an orphan, too."
"Small world," Remo said.
Stacy cleared his throat, and Joey shook her head quickly as though suddenly startled awake.
"Oh," she said, "I'm being rude."
She turned and nodded toward a stocky, strong-looking man standing beside her. He was tenderly holding a freshly bandaged arm.
"This is Oscar. Oscar Brack," she said. "He's the man who runs the day-to-day operations of this project."
The two men nodded at each other.
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"And you know Roger," Joey said. "It's made my day," Remo said.
Stacy swallowed, and Joey Webb restrained a smile.
Remo thought quickly. He didn't know yet who was who and what was what, but he might make more sparks fly if he alienated everybody. That wound on Brack's arm didn't have to mean a thing; he could have arranged to have himself shot at to remove suspicion. And Smith himself said that he had not seen Joey Webb for many years; for whatever reason, she might be involved with trying to sabotage her own project. Since Stacy hadn't given his real identity away, he might as well take advantage of it.