"No, Master Chiun," Smith insisted. "There will already be too many questions with Mark. I might be able to keep that confined to Folcroft, but if Mrs. Mikulka is killed, the police would definitely become involved. It is too risky."
The Master of Sinanju shot Smith an irritated look. The moment his head was turned, Mrs. Mikulka charged.
For a frightened moment, Smith thought his dowdy secretary's attack would succeed. But in the instant her claws should have ripped through Chiun's spindly neck, the old Asian was no longer where he had been.
Only Remo saw the perfect pirouette the Master of Sinanju executed around the charging woman. In a flash, he was beside her. As she lumbered past, a single whitened knuckle struck a point on her right temple.
Eileen Mikulka went down in a growling, wheezing heap.
Skidding on the dirty concrete floor, she came to a sliding stop at the feet of Harold W. Smith.
Smith looked up at the Master of Sinanju, his face wan. "Is she-" he pleaded.
"It lives," Chiun replied, gliding up beside Smith. His hands vanished inside his sleeves.
A low groan rose from beneath the rumpled pile that was Eileen Mikulka. Smith let out his own low sigh of relief.
"Thank God," Smith said. "We will strap her down more tightly than Mark and sedate her heavily. With luck she will pull through."
"I'll give you luck," Remo said. "You're lucky we found the loading-dock door open. Two seconds more and you would have been a midnight snack. What the hell happened here, Smitty?"
"It would appear Mark came down here after his escape," Smith said, checking the knot on his Dartmouth tie.
"We don't know where he went after. He didn't leave a trail outside to follow." Remo nodded to Eileen Mikulka. "So how did he change her? These things aren't werewolves. You said all the contaminated water was being collected."
For a moment, Smith seemed puzzled. "It is," he insisted, frowning. The light dawned. "Except-" His face blanched. The CURE director stepped hastily over his secretary's body, hurrying inside the storage room.
The refrigerator door was open. On the floor the aspirin bottle Remo had brought from Manhattan lay on its side. The cap was off. Smith's bad knee creaked like crunching cornstarch as he quickly knelt. When he shook the bottle, a single drop fell out.
"Oh, my," Smith said.
"That explains that," Remo said. "Why the hell didn't you dump that stuff?"
"I was keeping it here for testing in the future if it became necessary or until a purer form of the formula could be found. Mark knew this was where it was stored."
"Why would the Prince risk his life poisoning the Emperor's concubine when he knew that Sinanju was but a stone's throw away?" Chiun asked.
"Probably wanted her to buy some time for his escape. Mission accomplished, by the way. He's long gone by now."
"I fear that was not his purpose here," Smith said. His eyes were trained on a silver object in the corner. There were three similar, barrel-shaped devices lined up in a neat row. Only one seemed operational. Even across the room near the door, Remo and Chiun could feel the intense cold emanating from the device. A top lid had been popped open. Weird steam-like melting dry ice-rose from the open top.
While the three of them had been in the room, Remo had watched the temperature gauge on the side change. It had started at -132 and was now at -98. "What's that contraption?" Remo asked.
When Smith looked up, his angular face had grown visibly haggard. Remo didn't like the older man's tone.
"Perhaps we should discuss this in my office," the CURE director said. He didn't look Remo in the eye.
Chapter 34
"You son of a bitch," Remo growled.
They had returned to Smith's office. The CURE director had taken up his post behind his desk, hands folded neatly before him. Remo and Chiun stood in front of the desk near Mark Howard's vacant chair.
Smith had just finished telling them, in the most blunt, clinical terms possible, exactly what had been stored in the stainless-steel drum downstairs.
"You no-good, lying, cold-hearted son of a bitch," Remo repeated. Knots of rage stood out on his neck. He clenched his hands so tight his digging nails nearly drew blood.
"I did not lie," Smith pointed out. "And you were aware that we took a semen sample from you the day you arrived here at Folcroft."
"Hold the phone," Remo said, a warning finger raised. "It's not like I was awake for that particular party. You didn't even let me in on the joke until twenty years later. And that was only after I found out you'd gone off and created a test-tube son for me without even telling me about him."
Smith's lips thinned. "That child was not created as a son for you," he said tightly, clearly uncomfortable with this aspect of the discussion. "He might have been your biological offspring, but he was brought into existence as a contingency plan for CURE. In case you were killed in the line of duty, Winston was to be our fallback."
"'Brought into existence,'" Remo scoffed. "Do you even hear yourself? You jerked me around so you could jerk some other poor slob around." A thought suddenly occurred to him. "How many more are there?"
"I do not understand."
"You used artificial insemination to make one. How many more little contingency mes are running around out there?"
"Winston was the only one," Smith said.
"How do I know that?" Remo demanded. "You've had that stuff stored downstairs in deep freeze for thirty years. You could have whipped up a hundred more in all that time."
"It is my understanding that you are able to tell when someone is not telling the truth. Remo, Master Chiun, I give you my word that there was only one baby born with the aid of Remo's, er, contribution."
"He does not lie," Chiun said. The old Korean stood at Remo's elbow, leathery countenance unreadable.
"Small comfort, you bastard," Remo grumbled. A delicate touch to the wrist. Remo glanced at the Master of Sinanju. Chiun was shaking his head. His yellowing white puffs of hair stirred almost imperceptibly.
"Now is not the time, my son," he said in Korean. "We have a far greater problem on our hands."
In English he said to Smith, "Remo's seed was frozen for many years. Would it retain its potency after all this time?"
Smith exhaled. "I'm not certain. There is another sample that Mark left in the container. I can send it out for testing in the morning. For now I can only guess, but I do believe in the fertility field ten years is considered a long time for liquid-nitrogen storage. And we've tripled that time. However, I have maintained the environment meticulously over the years. I suppose it is possible."
"Swell," Remo said. "I guess we finally know now what she was really after this time. And now thanks to you, Judith White has a turkey baster with my name on it. You're unbelievable, you know that, Smith?"
There was no emotion on the CURE director's face. "I do that which is necessary," he replied levelly. "And might I suggest we put off the recriminations until we have retrieved the specimen?" He stretched his hands for his keyboard. "I will arrange a military flight back to Maine. Mark does not have access to CURE's facilities any longer, so if that is where he is headed, he will have to get there by conventional means. You should arrive there first."
Remo crossed his arms. "I can't believe this is what she was after all along," he muttered bitterly.
"Yes," Smith said as he worked. "It would seem that the chaos of the past few days was engineered just to satisfy some mating urge in Judith White. Of course she could not have known about the sample. She must have given Mark some sort of instructions after she fed him the formula."
"The first time this happened years ago that other monster wanted to do the same damn thing," Remo said. "What do they want with me?"
"You are Sinanju," Chiun said with a simple shrug. "Other females sense it-why would these be any different?"