"Bomb," Remo said. "Somebody set a bomb."
"Obviously," Chiun said. "It was the closest escape of my life. A moment's hesitation would have doomed us both. Fortunately, Remo, I never trusted you, so I was on my guard, ready to meet disaster if it came."
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Remo looked down at the snow next to Chiun. He pointed to the object there.
"Chiun," he said.
"Yes, ingrate," Chiun said.
"If this was all so nip and tuck and a split-second dàsh to safety, and all that . . ."
"It was," said Chiun. "It was just like that."
"If it was," Remo said, "how'd you have time to roll up your sleeping mat and take it with you?"
Chiun looked at Remo, at the sleeping mat, then back at Remo again.
"Do you know what sleeping mats cost these days?" he said.
"No sign of who triggered the place?" Remo asked.
Chiun shook his head. "There were two of them. I could hear them bumping around like bison, whispering to each other, splashing things from cans. And then there was that friend of yours, screaming your name in the night."
Remo was puzzled for a second, until he realized Chiun was referring to the whispering voice that had gently called his name. He focused his ears for a moment, but the sound was drowned out by the crackling of flames.
"And that thunkety-thunk of all that machinery keeping those trees warm," Chiun groused. "It is impossible to sleep up here."
"But you didn't see who set the fire," Remo said.
"No. You expect me to do everything for you?"
They looked up as Pierre LaRue charged into the clearing.
His face was anguished, but when he saw Joey standing safely next to Remo,and Chiun, the tension went
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from his countenance. He smiled as he came up and tossed a heavy woolen blanket around her shoulders.
"Peer was plenty worried, you bet," he said. "What happened here?" he asked Remo.
"A bomb," Remo said. "We don't know who."
"Damn Moonten Eyes," said Peer, with a deep, throaty growl. "They got to be doing this thing."
"Maybe you're right," Remo said. "Maybe you're right."
From down the road, they heard the whoop of the fire engine belonging to Tulsa Torrent, and as it pulled into the clearing, Remo saw Roger Stacy sitting on the front seat next to the driver.
When Stacy saw the burning building reduced to rubble, he shook his head to the driver. There was no point in pouring water on a building already destroyed.
"Just back off," he said. "Make sure nothing spreads to the trees."
He hopped down from the cab of the fire truck, and the truck pulled away, back onto the road to a point where it commanded a view of both the front and back of the building.
Stacy joined the four other people in front of the building.
"Sabotage?" he asked Remo.
Remo nodded. "Gasoline and a bomb."
"Thank God nobody was hurt."
The crackling sound of the fire was dying as the A-
frame was slowly burning itself into ash. Remo
could again hear the wind whistling overhead, and then
he heard another sound.
He looked down toward Chiun. The old man had
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heard it, too. He nodded over his left shoulder, indicating that it came from that direction.
Without a word, Remo ran off toward the edge of the clearing. Just inside the wall of trees, he found the source of the sound.
Oscar Brack had been burned to the color of raw steak. His face was blistered, and all the hair had been singed from his face. His clothing was charred, and his lips were cracked, raw flesh showing through the broken skin.
He was sitting against the base of a tree, his hands folded over his stomach, where blood still oozed from a ripped-open wound.
He was trying to whistle, but his burned lips made no more than a hiss. Over and over again, he tried to whistle. Remo recognized the tune: the opening bars of "Danny Boy."
He knelt next to the man. Could it have been Brack who started the fire and explosion at the A-frame? It made no sense. Brack was almost like a father to Joey. What would have driven him to try to kill her? And yet, here he was, and the burns that covered his body were evidence of his involvement.
"Brack, what happened?" Remo said.
He moved the man's hands aside to look at the stomach wound. He could see raw innards, and he shook his . head and refolded the man's hands.
The stench of alcohol poured from Brack's body.
"Joey," he hissed. "No good. He was no good. Not for her. A traitor." Then he lapsed into a temporary trance, staring straight ahead, trying to whistle again.