Deadly Seeds td-21

by Warren Murphy

"Sir, the four agricultural experts assigned to the Indian embassy are occupied tomorrow as follows: one is lecturing at Yale on America's responsibility to share its food; another is a panel member on… I have the title right here… 'America the Monster'… he said he would have liked to come to the demonstration but the ambassador made him go to the panel discussion on the threat of being sent back to India if he didn't. The third is speaking on American hypocrisy at Berkeley… he never goes to any agricultural exhibits anyhow… and the fourth is sick with stomach cramps. Too much rich American food or something."

  "But they must know this is the miracle grain."

  "Their only answer, sir, was that they're too busy fighting hypocrisy. Perhaps if we told them the process was part of a nuclear weapon. When I mentioned nuclear, they were very interested until they found out it only had to do with the seeds."

  "No," said Fielding.

  When Jordan arrived that afternoon to discuss his little problem, Fielding demanded that an Indian representative be at one demonstration at least.

  "It's critical. India is the most important market of all," said Fielding.

  "India doesn't buy foodstuffs. I've checked this out thoroughly," said Jordan. "If you give them grains on credit, they take them, because if they wait long enough the credit will be forgotten. But their policy, and it has generally worked, Mr. Fielding, is that if there's a surplus of grain anywhere, they're going to get it free anyhow. They'd rather put their money in nuclear devices."

  "But they have an incredible famine problem. I've seen it myself."

  "Mr. Fielding, do you remember what India did last year? First they announced that they were not going to accept any more grain from the United States which had given them something like $16 billion-that's billion-in free food. Then, to punish the imperialist American monsters, they supported the Arab oil squeeze. When oil prices went up, so did the price of fertilizer. It tripled. India couldn't buy any, because all their money was going into nuclear bombs. So they asked America for more free food. And we gave it to them."

  "That's insane."

  "So's India," said Jordan. "If we paid them to take the Wondergrain, they'd take it. But they're not going to buy it."

  "Then we'll have to arrange some kind of credit for them," said Fielding, "or else India will become…" And he did not finish his sentence for it would have disclosed that if India did not buy the Wondergrain, it would become the food-richest nation on earth. What was left of earth.

  "All right. What's the problem you mentioned?" said Fielding.

  Fortunately, it turned out to be minor. It had taken months for Jordan's people to locate that talky commodities man, that Willoughby. One of the men who had arranged Willoughby's "accident" had had his house invaded. Mr. Fielding should be careful for the next few weeks. Check his door locks and things like that.

  "This was the only slipup," Jordan said. "The other commodities people, those other names you gave me, all of them were handled. Just this little problem and I think you should be careful."

  "I've been careful all my life. It's too late to be careful now," said Fielding. And he warned Jordan that if India were not part of the Wondergrain plan, Feldman, O'Connor and Jordan might find itself without its percentage.

  Of course, thought Fielding without mentioning it, if India became the most workable nation on earth, that would be almost as good as eliminating all the bugs all together.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Remo and Chiun saw the demonstration site down the flat highway. A herd of limousines, television trucks, and police vehicles surrounded a high fence on a rise three miles off, baking in the summer desert.

  "I do not believe food could grow here," said Chiun and once again told the story of how poor soil had forced Sinanju to send its best sons to foreign lands to earn food for the village. The way Chiun told it, a callow youth had ventured forth into a hostile world with nothing but his hands, his mind, and his character.

  "You were forty when you became Master of Sinanju," said Remo.

  "Fifty or a hundred, a new experience makes children of us all," said Chiun.

  In his search for Jordan who had paid Johnny Deussio who had paid Pete who paid the two who died in Harborcreek after killing Willoughby, Remo had been told by an all-too-bubbly secretary that Mr. Jordan "will be at the most major agricultural advancement since the plow."

  "Where?" Remo had asked.

  "The stunning great step of mankind by the one small agricultural step of one man, James Orayo Fielding."

  "Where?"

  "The salvation of the world which is what you might call this Wondergrain. For…"

  "Just tell me where it's happening," and hearing "the Mojave Desert," Remo asked where in the Mojave and endured another three minutes of windy wonder until he got the exact location. That was yesterday. They rented a car and drove and there were Chiun's trunks right in the back seat and in the car trunk.

  "I feel like a porter," Remo had said, loading the large colorful trunks into the car. "Could you make it on one less trunk, maybe?"

  To this question, Chiun had had a sudden attack of only being able to speak Korean, and since Remo had picked up some Korean over the years, Chiun could speak only a Pyongyang dialect which Remo did not know.

  As they neared the demonstration site, Chiun's English naturally unproved, especially when he found an excuse to repeat the legend of Sinanju. He also had a question. Where could he change paper money for real money, gold?

  "Where'd you get paper money?" asked Remo.

  "It's mine," said Chiun.

  "Where? You picked it up in that poolroom in East St. Louis, didn't you?"

  "It belongs to me," said Chiun.

  "You played pool for it, didn't you? Didn't you? You gambled."

  "I did not gamble. I educated."

  "I remember this big harangue you gave me once. The wasting of my talents on games. How when you put your skills to something frivolous, you lose your skills. I mean, you made it sound like I was betraying Sinanju itself. You even told me about your teacher and the balls that could go in all directions. I remember that. I was never to use my skills in gambling."

  "There is nothing worse," said Chiun solemnly, "than a talky white man." And he would say no more on the subject.

  It was not hard to find Jordan. Remo told one of the girls handing out Wondergrain brochures that he was a magazine writer and he wanted to see Jordan.

  Jordan came trotting, fuschia Palm Beach suit, a tie of woven mud and silver, capped teeth, and plastic black hair, wondering in basso profundo how best he could be of service. Remo wanted an interview.

  "Mr. Fielding, the great agricultural genius of our times, is busy now but you can see him after NBC News tonight. As of today, you will be speaking to a world figure. That's the whole world."

  "The round one?" said Chiun, folding his long hands before himself.

  "I want to talk to you, not Mr. Fielding," said Remo.

  "Anything to be of help. Mr. Fielding will be ready at 8:30 tonight after his worldwide exposure on NBC. I must run now."

  But Jordan did not run far. In fact, he did not run at all. Something was holding the padded shoulder of his fuschia jacket.

  "Oh, me. You want to interview me. Fine," said Jordan.

  A loudspeaker crackled with a Western voice explaining the limitations of available land as Remo went with Jordan into the smaller of two tents, used as a press shed. Chiun stayed to hear the lecture because, as he explained, he was an expert on starving peoples. Just fifteen hundred years ago…

  Two reporters hung, passed out drunk, over a small couch near the press bar. The bartender washed glasses. Remo refused an offered drink and sat down with Jordan across from a typewriter.

  "Ask away. I'm at your disposal," said Jordan.

  "You most certainly are, Giordano," said Remo. "Why did you have those commodities men killed?"

  "I beg your pardon," said Jordan, his black eyes blinking under indoor fluorescent.
/>   "Why did you have Willoughby killed?"

  "Willoughby who?" said Jordan evenly.

  Remo pressured a knee cap.

  "Eeeeow," Jordan wheezed.

  The reporters woke up and seeing it was just a simple assault went back to sleep. The bartender, a giant of a man with shoulders like doorways, leaped over the bar with a thick three-foot wooden stick. With a massive swing from his heels he brought the club down on Mr. Jordan's assailant. There was a resounding crack. The crack was the stick; the head was still untouched. The bartender brought a fist smashing toward the assailant's face. The fist felt like it was deflected by a small gust of air and then there was a very funny sting under the bartender's nose and he felt very much like going to sleep. He did, underneath a desk.

  "You didn't answer me," said Remo.

  "Right," said Jordan. "Answer you. Answer you. Willoughby. I seem to remember the man. Commodities man. Willoughby."

  "Why did you have him killed?"

  "Is he dead?" said Jordan, massaging his knee.

  "Very," said Remo.

  "The good die young," said Jordan.

  Remo put a thumb on Jordan's throat. It brought the truth out of the man. Gagging, but the truth. Willoughby was killed because he was threatening the greatest agricultural advance in the history of mankind. In the history of mankind.

  "What other history is there?" asked Remo.

  Willoughby had evidence that the grain market was artificially depressed. Willoughby did not know why but he suspected something big. It was hard to breathe. Would the stranger release his throat grip?

  "Whew," said Jordan getting all the oxygen he needed. "Thank you," he said and straightened his tie and brushed flat his fuschia suit. "Vito, Al," he yelled. "Will you come here a minute?" And to Remo he confided they could help explain some things. Willoughby wasn't the only one, nor were there just commodities brokers. There were some construction men too. And oh, yes, said Jordan when two large men in silk suits with heavy bulges at the shoulders entered, there would soon be a reporter who couldn't keep his hands to himself.

  Hearing "hands to himself" one of the reporters in a boozy slumber said, "I'm sorry, Mabel. You've got to realize I respect you as a person."

  "Vito, Al. Kill this sonuvabitch," said Jordan.

  "Right here, Mr. Jordan?" said Al, drawing a large square .45 with pearl insets on the handle.

  "Yes."

  "In front of the reporters?"

  "They've passed out," said Jordan.

  "You said it, boss," said Vito. "Maybe we should use a silencer?"

  "Good idea," said Jordan, hobbling to his men. "I have important things to do. Don't worry about police. It's self-defense. Defend yourselves."

  Remo idly listened to this, drumming on a typewriter roll with his fingertips, legs crossed, leaning back in a chair. When Al aimed the bolstered barrel of a small automatic at him, Remo centered his weight and just in case Chiun might be looking into the press tent, he kept his left wrist very straight behind the typewriter carriage. He had one worry. The chair. But as his spine pressed down suddenly into the chair, it held. That was good. And his left hand was perfectly straight from palm to forearm.

  Al was squeezing the trigger when he saw and felt simultaneously the silenced automatic come back into his chest along with something else. It was heavy. He felt himself jammed into a desk. A Royal Standard was in his chest along with, he guessed, the automatic. At least that was where his arm ended and the last time he had seen the gun a fraction of a second before. The return arm of the carriage was jammed into his right ear. The black roller was into where his nose bone had been. He found breathing impossible, largely because his right lung was flat. Which was all right too because the heart didn't need oxygen anymore since his left aorta supplied only a space bar and the right ventricle ended at "D," "F," and "G."

  "Keep down the frigging noise, will you?" said one of the reporters. "I'm trying to work." The reporter rolled over on a desk, fluffing a raincoat for a softer rest for his head.

  "Jeez," said Vito.

  He said it again. "Oh, Jeez," and without silencer he squeezed the trigger of his .45 and kept on squeezing. Unfortunately his target had moved. So had the .45. It was in his mouth and before everything went black forever, which was very quickly, he was amazed at how little it hurt. Sort of one loud sting in the back of his head.

  Jordan watched the back of Vito's head splatter against the new fuchsia suit and onto the imported tie with the silver and mud weave.

  "We should talk," said Jordan. "Let us reason together."

  "Am I correct in assuming you had those commodities people killed because they knew about efforts to depress the market in wheat, winter wheat to be exact?"

  "Correct. Absolutely. Totally correct. Totally."

  "And that was so that people would invest in this new Wondergrain, because of the larger need now?"

  "Make people more responsive. Correct. Totally correct. Greater need. Greater buying. It's going to be a boon to mankind. A boon. A helpful boon. Totally a boon. I can cut you in. You'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams."

  "And Fielding?"

  "He's an idiot," said Jordan. "We can control the whole thing. That dummy wanted to give away the profits. Name the grain after his dingy butler. It was I who saw the whole thing as Wondergrain, the miracle answer to today's food problems. I took over the packaging and marketing. I control the shares. We can be rich. Rich. Rich." Jordan screamed the "rich."

  Most men scream when their spinal column snaps into their navel.

  If Remo had thought only about what Jordan was saying and let his body flow the stroke, there would would have been no problem. If he had thought about just the stroke, there would have been no problem. But thinking about both, Remo noticed something wrong. Not that the final effect was different. Jordan lay on the press tent floor, ears at heel like a folded card.

  It was the performance that was wrong, the angle of penetration that lacked the perfect perpendicular to his upper arm, which now felt a small meaningless twinge. The difference between Sinanju and other methods, other methods of anything for that matter, was that the form must be precisely correct, no matter what the result.

  As Chiun had said: "When the results are different, it is too late." So Remo did the stroke twice more around an imaginary Jordan, the flat hand tip coming back towards itself in the snap that became perpendicular on final impact. It was right. Good.

  "Disgrace," came the squeaky Oriental voice from the flap of the tent. "Now you learn to do it right. Now you bother to learn correctness. You have shamed me." It was Chiun.

  "In front of whom? Who the hell else would know?" said Remo.

  "Imperfection is its own disgrace," said Chiun. And then in Korean bewailing the years of pearls cast before ungrateful pale pieces of pig's ear and how not even the Master of Sinanju could transform mud into diamonds.

  "No," said Chiun to someone behind him. "Do not come in. You should not look upon shame."

  A telephone rang behind Remo. A reporter stirred, woke up, and answered it groggily.

  "Yeah. Right. It's me. I'm right on top of everything. Yeah. They planted the grain this morning under sparkling hot skies, the new Wondergrain that can save the world from starvation, according to James O. Fielding, 42, of Denver. Yeah. Let the lead stand. Nothing happening. I'll stay right on it. Right. Harvest will be in four weeks… the Wondergrain. It's rough out here in the Mojave. Let me tell you. Change that lead to planted the grain in the dry unyielding sand of the Mojave Desert.' Etcetera. Etcetera. Right." The reporter hung up and crawled over his raincoat to the bar, where he poured a full glass of Hennessey cognac, drank two gulps, and went slowly to the floor head first so that he was sleeping upside down.

  "It is CIA plot," came a woman's voice behind Chiun.

  She was beautiful standing there in the desert sunlight, rich black hair flowing to her shoulders, full womanly breasts and a face of jeweled perfection, eyes dark like an unlit
universe, and skin smooth with youth. She also had a mouth. Loud.

  "Is CIA plot. I know. CIA plot. CIA ruining goodwill of American peoples, attempting to destroy the revolution. Hello, my name is Maria Gonzales. Long live the revolution."

  "Who is this?" Remo asked Chiun.

  "A brave young girl helping revolution against white imperialist oppressors," said Chiun sweetly.

  "You tell her who you work for?"

  "He is a revolutionary. All third-world peoples are revolutionary," said Maria.

  "Could you put aside that revolutionary jazz while you're with me?" said Remo.

  "As a matter of fact, yes. I am a farmer first. I talk revolution like you talk apple pie. If you are a friend of this sweet old gentleman, I'm really glad to meet you." She extended a hand. Remo took it. The palm was soft and warm. She smiled. Remo smiled. Chiun slapped the hands apart. Such touching was improper in public.

  "I'm an agricultural representative of the democratic government of Free Cuba. I think you people really have something good here," said Maria. She smiled. Remo smiled back. Chiun got between them.

  Fielding was pressing the final soybean into the crusty dry soil when Remo got to the inner edge of the crowd. The field itself was on top of a small hill. While the planting area was no more than twenty yards square, it sat inside an open area four times that size, surrounded by high, barbed-wire-crowned hurricane fencing. The field had a strange smell to Remo, a slight odor that was more a memory than a sense.

  "Tomorrow," Fielding was saying, "I will plant a similar crop in Bangor, Maine, and the next day in the Sierras, and the following day, the final planting in Ohio. You are welcome to attend those also."

  After he covered the last seed with his foot, he straightened up and rubbed his back. "Now, the sun filter," said Fielding and the workmen covered the plot with an opaque plastic tarpaulin, shaped like a tent.

  "What you have just seen," said Fielding, catching his breath, "is the most significant advance in agriculture since the plow. I will tell you this. It is chemical. It eliminates the need for expensive land preparation, it expands the parameters of temperature and water needs which has kept tillable land at only a small percentage of the earth's surface. It requires no fertilizer or pesticides. It will grow in thirty days and I hope you will all be back here that day to witness this revolution. Gentlemen, you are seeing an end to world hunger."