Escorted by the three guards, Fielding walked to the black plastic sunscreen and turned to face the rows of benches which were filling rapidly. The last arrivals were Remo and Chiun and the delegate from India who had found a tray of delicious canapés and had tarried for just a few more. He finally entered through the open gates, walked to the front bench, and forced his way onto it between two men, while mumbling about American inconsiderateness.
Remo and Chiun stood behind the last bench. Chiun’s eyes ignored Fielding to rove the compound.
“It was in here,” he whispered softly, “that Fielding disappeared?”
“Yes,” said Remo.
“Very strange,” said Chiun. Almost as strange, he thought, as the six men holding cardboard tubes who had taken up positions outside the chain–link fence and were looking in. And almost as strange as the Korean and the seven other Orientals who now stood together in a corner of the compound, their eyes fixed on Remo. For a moment, the eyes of the younger Korean met Chiun’s but the younger man looked quickly away.
Fielding cleared his throat, looked over the crowd, and intoned: “Ladies and gentlemen, I believe this may be one of the greatest days in the history of civilized man.”
The Indian delegate snickered, while sucking a small lump of caviar from between his front teeth.
Fielding turned and with a wave of his hand signaled to the guards. They lifted the front edge of the plastic sunscreen, pulled it up, and then began hauling it toward the back of the planting area.
As the dying afternoon sun hit and glinted gold on the high healthy field of wheat, the crowd released one large collective breath. “Ooooooooh.”
And there in the back was rice and barley and next to the wheat were soybeans.
“The fruits of my miracle process,” Fielding shouted, waving a hand dramatically toward the field of food.
The audience applauded. There were cheers. The Indian delegate used the edge of his right thumbnail to pick a piece of cracker from between two back teeth.
The applause continued and swelled and it took Fielding repeated shouts of “gentlemen” to quiet down the audience.
“It is my intention that this process will be used—virtually at cost—in any country which desires it. Wondergrain will be provided on a first–come, first–served basis. I have warehouses now filled with seed and it will be available for the nations of the world.” He glanced at his watch. “It is now twenty after seven. I would suggest that you gentlemen inspect this crop. Take samples if you wish, but, please, only small samples since there are many of you and this is, after all, only a small field. In thirty minutes, let us reassemble inside the tents. I have representatives there who will meet with those delegates of any nations wishing to sign up for the Wondergrain process, and I will also be able to answer any press questions too. Please keep to the walkways through the field so the crop is not trampled underfoot. Thank you.”
Fielding nodded and the reporters sprinted for the wooden walkways that divided the field into four sections. They grabbed up small handfuls of samples. Behind them, the other delegates began lining up to walk through the fields. The Indian delegate walked straight ahead, ignoring the wooden walkway, through the waist–high wheat, trampling it underfoot, grabbing samples to stuff into his briefcase. He turned and smiled. Back in the rear of the line he saw the French ambassador. How pleasant. The French ambassador was a Parisian, someone with whom he could honestly discuss the crassness and crudity of Americans.
Remo and Chiun watched and were watched.
“What do you think, Chiun?” asked Remo.
“I think there is a strange smell in this place. It smells like a factory.”
Remo sniffed the air. The faint smell from before was there again. He was able to pin it down closer now; it was the scent of machine oil.
“I think you’re right,” said Remo.
“I know I am right,” said Chiun. “I also know something else.”
“What’s that?”
“You are going to be attacked.”
Remo looked down at Chiun, then his eye caught a motion off to the side. He saw a lone Cadillac limousine, tooling its way down through the sand toward the front of the line. Behind the wheel was a face Remo recognized, even though the man now wore dark glasses and a hat, and the last time Remo had seen him he was wearing a toilet bowl. Johnny Deuce. Now what was he doing here?
Remo looked back on Chiun.
“An attack? On us?” said Remo.
“On you,” corrected Chiun. “The Korean and the others. Those men outside the fence with their little cardboard tubes. Their eyes have all been on you and they are moving leadenly, like men on their way to deal with death.”
“Hmmm,” said Remo. “What should we do?”
Chiun shrugged. “Do what you like. It is no concern of mine.”
“I thought we were coequal partners.”
“Ah, yes. But that is in official assignments. If you go getting yourself into trouble on your own, you can’t keep expecting me to help you.”
“How many are there?” asked Remo.
“Fourteen. The eight Orientals. The six with the tubes.”
“For fourteen, I don’t need you.”
“I certainly hope not.”
Fielding was now leading the way to the twin tents outside the gates and the crowd was falling in line behind him, slowing down, unable to fit all at once through the gates.
As the Indian ambassador passed Chiun, he nodded curtly to the old man. “Gross, these Americans, what? How like them to try to sell this process which should rightly belong to all mankind.”
“They pay their bills on time. They manage to feed themselves,” said Chiun. “But don’t worry. Wait long enough and they will give you this seed for free as they always do. They have a large stake in keeping you people alive.”
“Oh,” sniffed the Indian. “And what might that be?”
“You make them look good,” said Chiun.
The Indian snorted and moved away from Chiun. Remo was thinking about the smell of oil, fainter now with the powdered sand kicked up by so many feet, drifting through the air. The compound was almost empty. The fields of grain had been denuded by the sample pickers and had returned to the bare sand it had been only weeks before. The sunscreen was rolled up against the back fence and looking in over it, at Remo, was a hard–faced man carrying his cardboard tube. The man glanced at his watch.
“What do you think they’ve got in those tubes?” asked Remo.
“I do not think they are carrying flutes to play the music for the party.”
Remo and Chiun turned toward the tents. The last of the crowd was disappearing through the door openings in the canvas, and now standing before them, blocking their way through the gates, were the eight Orientals.
They stood in a line across the gate and at a signal from the one with hazel eyes, they began to peel off their suits to reveal Ninja black combat suits.
“They are going to attack you with Ninja and the men with guns are going to attack you Western,” said Chiun.
“Don’t tell me your problems,” said Remo. “You already said you were out of it.”
“You are not good enough to stand against such an attack,” said Chiun.
“’S all right,” said Remo. “I’ve got to do everything around here anyway. It’s not like I had a coequal partner or anything. But it’s just me and my employee. And you know how hired help is these days.”
“That is vileness unequaled by anything you have said before.”
The Korean in the Ninja uniform spoke to Chiun. “Away, old man. We have no quarrel with you.”
“I quarrel with your continued existence,” said Chiun.
“It’s your funeral, old man,” the Korean said, glancing at his watch. Behind him, Remo heard a cardboard tube being ripped open and he turned to watch the six men around the outside of the fence pull out rifles.
“Eight o’clock,” the Korean yelled. “Attack.”
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br /> “Work the inside, Little Father,” said Remo.
“Of course. I get all the dirty work,” said Chiun.
The man at the far end of the compound was just raising his rifle to his shoulder as Remo and Chiun moved toward the eight Ninja men. The Orientals ignored Chiun and moved toward Remo but Chiun passed before Remo, moving from the left to the right, pulling in upon himself the force of the eight men, collapsing with it, and opening a gap that Remo darted through. The Ninja noticed Remo was gone only when they looked for him, but when they tried to follow him through the gates, they found them blocked by Chiun, his arms spread wide, his voice intoning in Korean:
“The Master of Sinanju bids you die.”
The six men outside the fence saw nothing but a pile of bodies. Where the hell was the white man? Fred Felice of Chicago was nearest the mass pileup, but the wire of the fence was in his way and he moved his head to see more clearly. Then the wire of the fence was no longer in his way as his head went through the fence like a hard–boiled egg being slammed through a wire slicer. He didn’t last long enough to scream.
The next man screamed.
Remo reached him by moving crablike, skittering, remembering the lessons—the hour after hour of running at top speed along wet toilet tissue and being lectured by Chiun if he should so much as wrinkle the paper—and by the time he reached Anthony Abominale of Detroit, Abominale was just turning toward him. He shouted, then the shout turned into a scream that drowned in his throat on the blood that leaked into it from his shattered skull.
The shout brought the eyes of the other marksmen toward Remo.
“There he is. There he is.” Bullets started pinging as the riflemen fired shot after shot from automatic clips. Remo kept moving, seeming to travel back and forth, seeming to take only one step forward and two steps back, but still moving like a slow wave of water toward the corner of the compound where another man waited, firing point blank. He was lucky. He was able to squeeze the trigger one last time. He was unlucky in that the rifle barrel was in his mouth when the gun went off.
As he moved, Remo glanced over his shoulder. The Ninja battle had moved into the center of the compound and all he could see of Chiun was an occasional flash of blue robe. Well. Nothing to worry about. There were only eight of them.
Remo went over the fence of the compound to come up upon the fourth man, then took him by vaulting back over the fence and with his feet driving the man’s skull and spine deep down into his shoulders.
The fifth man got off two shots more before his intestines were ruptured with his own gun butt and the sixth dropped his weapon and ran but got only two steps before his face was buried deep in sand and he inhaled deep, sucked in the deadly grains, twitched once, and was still.
Then Remo was back at the front of the compound and running away from the tents through the dusk. A crowd had come out of the tents, attracted by the gunshots, and Remo moved silently past them, so quickly most did not even notice anyone passing. Then Remo was at the Cadillac which sat, motor idling, with Johnny Deussio behind the wheel.
Remo jerked open the door without bothering to depress the door–handle button.
Deussio looked at him in surprise that turned to fright, then to horror.
“Hiya,” said Remo. “I almost didn’t recognize you. You’re not wearing your toilet.”
“What are you going to do?”
“How many guesses you need?”
“Okay. Okay. But tell me. You really are a force fighting crime in this country, aren’t you? Just tell me if I’m right.”
“You’re right. But don’t look on us as a force. Look on us as a cure.”
And then Remo cured Johnny Deuce of life.
He did not wait for the autopsy. Instead he was back, moving through the crowds of people into the compound. Ahead he saw only motionlessness and as he grew nearer a mound of bodies. But no Chiun. He raced forward faster and as he neared the bodies, he caught a glimpse of the blue robes and he heard Chiun say, “Is it all right to come out?”
“Well, of course it’s all right to come out.”
Like a dolphin rising from water, Chiun moved up, seemingly unwrinkled, out of the mass of the dead, and Remo took his arm and walked him away, ignoring the crowds beginning to cluster around them.
“Why of course?” asked Chiun. “You play your games and those silly men are firing bullets all over and you think that one might not hit me? Do you think coequal partners are that easy to find? Particularly one who takes care of eight enemies while you are fooling around with only six?”
“Seven,” said Remo. “I found another one over there in the car.”
“Still. It is not eight.”
A reporter clapped Chiun on the shoulder. “What happened? What happened? What’s going on here?”
“Those men tried to overthrow the United States Constitution, but they did not reckon with the wiles and skill of the Master of Sinanju and his assistant,” said Chiun. “They did not.”
“Some kind of gang war,” interrupted Remo. “These guys in here; those guys out there. The guy behind it is over in that Cadillac.” He pointed to Johnny Deuce’s car. “Talk to him.”
Remo moved backwards with Chiun toward the far corner of the compound, out of the reach of the tent lights in the suddenly accumulated night darkness, and then he felt the sand under his feet and for a moment, it did not seem sandy enough.
“Chiun, what about this sand?”
“The feel is wrong,” said Chiun. “Why do you think I worried about being hit by a bullet? I could not move right.”
Remo sniffed. “Is that oil?”
Chiun nodded. “I have taken many breaths. Even your deserts smell in this country.”
Remo rubbed his toe in the sand. The consistency underfoot did not feel right. He spun on his right foot, pushing off with his left, corkscrewing his right foot into the sand, and then stopped.
“Chiun, it’s metal.” He moved his leg around. His foot rested on a large metal plate. Through the thin leather soles of his Italian loafers, he felt small holes in the plate.
Remo pulled his right leg from the sand like a person yanking a toe from a too–hot bath.
“Chiun. I’ve got it.”
“Is it contagious?”
“Don’t be funny. The Wondergrain. It’s a fake. Fielding’s got an underground compartment here. The grain doesn’t grow here. It’s pushed up from underneath the sand. That’s why those construction men were killed. They knew. They knew.”
“And you have solved the riddle.”
“This time, yes. The radioactive warehouse. This bastard’s going to peddle radioactive grain and make farmland all over the world worthless. It’ll make every famine the world ever had look like a picnic.” He looked down at the sand, more in sorrow than in surprise. “I think it’s time to talk to Fielding.”
They moved through the crowd and then heard it—the whoop, whoop, whoop of an ambulance.
“Little late for an ambulance, Little Father,” said Remo.
The ambulance rushed up toward the tent, kicking up sand sprays from its wheels and two men jumped from the back carrying a stretcher.
“What’s going on?” Remo asked a reporter.
“Fielding. He collapsed.”
Remo and Chiun passed through the crowd as if it were not there. As Fielding was being put on the stretcher, Remo leaned over to him and said:
“Fielding, I know. I know the whole scheme.”
Fielding’s face was chalky white, his lips almost violet under the harsh overhead light. The lips split into a thin smile as his unfocused eyes searched out Remo. “They’re all bugs. Bugs. And now the bugs are all going to die. And I did it.” His eyes closed again and the ambulance attendants carried him away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“IT COULDN’T BE WORSE.”
Smith’s voice sounded as forlorn and sour as his words.
“I don’t know why. Just get rid of the radioactive seeds.”
“All right,” said Remo. “Then just let the government brand the Fielding process as a hoax.”
“That’s the problem. That lunatic public relations company that Fielding’s got, they’re already out spreading the word that powerful government forces are trying to stop Fielding from feeding the world. If the government acts now, America’ll wind up being labeled antihuman.”
“Well, I’ve got a solution,” said Remo.
“What’s that?”
“Just let the seed get out and get planted around the world. And then there won’t be anybody left to label us anti-human.”
“I knew I could count on you for clear thinking,” said Smith, his voice dripping ice. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” said Remo. “Call anytime.”
After he hung up the phone, Chiun said, “You do not feel as good as you try to sound.”
“It’ll pass.”
“No, it won’t. You feel you have been made a fool of by Fielding and now people may suffer because of it.”
“Maybe,” Remo conceded.
“And you do not know what to do about it. Fielding is dying; you cannot threaten to kill him unless he tells the truth, because he just will not care.”
“Something like that,” Remo said. He looked out the window over the city of Denver. “I guess it’s because Smitty feels so bad. You know, I could never tell him but I kind of respect him. He’s got a tough job and he does it well. I’d like to help him out.”
“Bah,” said Chiun. “Emperors come and emperors go. You and I should go to Persia. There assassins are appreciated.”
Remo shook his head, still looking at the skyline. “I’m an American, Chiun. I belong here.”
“You are the heir to the title of Sinanju. You belong where your profession takes you.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” said Remo. “I just don’t want to leave Smith and CURE.”
“And what of your coequal partner? Does my opinion count for nothing?”
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