On the elevator ride to their room, Remo broke the bad news.
"No duckling on the menu."
"How can this be?"
"The desk clerk says that it would offend the guests who come to feed the lobby ducks."
"This is wrong," Chiun said huffily.
"Take it up with management. I gotta get this tape to Smith."
Abruptly, Chiun stabbed the sixth-floor button. The elevator instantly lurched to a stop and the doors slid apart.
"This isn't our floor," Remo pointed out.
"I must arrange for my trunks to be shipped from our last hotel to this one," Chiun said, stepping off the elevator. He turned and grazed the down button.
"What makes you think we're going to be here that long?" Remo asked, holding the door open with one hand.
"Why, I must supervise repairs to my Enchanted Village, soon to be renowned as Assassin's World."
"Give it up, Little Father. It's a crater now."
"Never," said the Master of Sinanju firmly.
"Suit yourself," said Remo, releasing the door. It closed, and the lift resumed its upward climb.
Remo entered his suite to find the phone ringing.
"Don't tell me Chiun maimed another member of the Hotel Workers Local," he grumbled as he reached for the receiver.
Before he could say hello, Harold Smith's lemony voice was saying, "Remo. Stay put. I am on my way."
"How'd you know we were here?" Remo blurted out.
"The hotel computer told my computer," said Smith, hanging up.
Harold W. Smith arrived at eleven-thirty sharp. He came into the suite carrying his ever-present well-worn briefcase. Not seeing the Master of Sinanju, he asked, "Where is Chiun?"
"Said something about going out for a bite to eat," said Remo. "The tape's over there," he added, indicating a coffee table.
Smith picked up the dictaphone and let it run.
The voice of Eider Drake came, dull with shock.
"This is the full confession of Eider Drake, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Sam Beasley Corporation. It all began with our third quarter of fiscal 1991, when we realized that declining revenues, spiraling taxes, and unforeseen start-up costs for EuroBeasley threatened the foundation of the company. I knew something would have to be done. My thoughts went to Cuba. There, I knew, was the perfect location for a new Beasley theme park, if only the current unpopular government could be toppled. I established contacts in the Cuban exile community toward this end. I realize now that I overreached my corporate authority, brought ruin down upon the company, and harmed the great memory of Sam Beasley. This, most of all, pains me. I am sorry. The idea was mine. The responsibility was mine. And I must pay the price. Everyone else was just following orders. Good-bye."
The tape ended.
"Not much of a confession," Remo remarked.
Wordlessly, Harold Smith placed the dictaphone in a receptacle in his briefcase that also contained a portable terminal and cellular phone hookup.
"I have spoken with the President," he said, closing the case.
"Yeah?"
"He is incredulous, of course. But we have agreed that for the good of the country and to preserve the good name of Samuel Beasley, this . . . um . . . undertaking should never become public knowledge."
"Smitty, Sam Beasley World is now a sinkhole bigger than Rhode Island. How are you going to cover that up?"
"You have just explained it perfectly. It's a sinkhole. A natural phenomenon."
"Yeah? You heard the tape all the way through. It was disgusting. They were going to relocate Beasley World to Cuba, for crying out loud."
Smith rubbed his jaw. "Cuba was quite a resort island in its heyday. It is not so farfetched. Assuming they could seize control by force."
"Smitty, everyone who died, died for a theme park! Castro is trying to nuke us with one of our own power plants, because some suit didn't want to pay taxes!"
Smith frowned. "We will have to deal with the Beasley angle later. The crisis has not passed. A third MIG has been shot down. It's unlikely the Cuban Air Force will penetrate our coastal-defense net, but these continued provocations cannot go unanswered forever."
"This is crazy," Remo muttered, looking out the window.
"You seem troubled."
"I am. I grew up watching Sam Beasley on TV. A lot of kids were betrayed when Drake perverted the company. All I can think of is 'What would Uncle Sam say if he were alive to see this'?"
"Not important," Smith said flatly.
Remo turned, his eyes angry, "So that's it? You take the tape and tie it into a pretty ribbon?"
"Not quite," said Smith. "We must go through Utiliduck and destroy all evidence of the criminal conspiracy."
"Utiliduck?"
"That is the official designation of the underground command, control, and utility complex underlying Beasley World."
"Where'd you learn that? No, wait. Let me guess. Beasley's computers told yours."
"No. The complex is no secret, although off-limits to the general public. It is from there the attractions are controlled, largely by computer."
At that point the Master of Sinanju entered the suite, his hands concealed in his voluminous sleeves.
"Hail, Emperor Smith," he announced loudly, not stopping.
Smith nodded. "Master Chiun."
"Bestower of crumbling castles." And with that, Chiun swept into the other room. The door slammed.
Remo looked at Smith ironically. "Guess you're back in the doghouse."
"It will pass."
"Did you really intend to hand over Beasley World to him?"
"No," Smith admitted. "But I had to placate him. The situation was desperate, and Chiun can be exceedingly stubborn at times."
Remo raised an inquiring eyebrow. "At times? Next time you notice him not being stubborn, blow a whistle, will you? I'd like to take a photograph for posterity. But what are you going to do now? You're out from under the promise, but you know Chiun. He's going to want the moon if he's ever to work for you again."
Before Smith could answer, a mangled quack came from the other room.
"What was that?" Smith asked.
"Sounded like a duck," Remo said casually. Then it hit him. "A duck!"
Remo shot into the next room.
He discovered the Master of Sinanju in the act of squeezing the life out of a gasping, kicking mallard.
"Give me that!" Remo demanded.
Chiun clutched the wriggling duck's neck more tightly. "It is mine! It is dinner!"
"Did you steal that duck from the lobby pond?"
"What duck?"
"That duck."
Chiun looked injured. "It is a mallard. And it offered itself to me."
"It did not!"
"In return for a kernel of corn," Chiun admitted. The mallard was kicking its webbed feet violently now. Its eyes bulged.
"You lured that innocent duck up here? Children play with those ducks."
"I only took one," Chiun said in an injured tone. "There are many others for the children to play with. They will not miss this scrawny specimen, barely fit for eating."
Remo put out his hand. "The duck, Chiun. Now."
Grudgingly, the Master of Sinanju surrendered the now limp mallard. It began coughing quackily as soon as its slim neck had been freed.
Chiun turned his bleak hazel eyes in the direction of Harold Smith.
"This is what the head of the mightiest house of assassins in history has been reduced to," he said bitterly. "A vagabond existence, scrounging in low places for his next meal."
Smith adjusted the knot of his tie. "I am sure we can come to some accommodation, Master Chiun."
"I will not negotiate on an empty stomach. A caliph once locked himself into a stone chamber with Master Boo and won many concessions, because Boo could not stand the sound of his own growling stomach."
"I meant nothing of the kind," Smith said quickly.
"Did you bring my tape of the bea
uteous Cheeta?"
"Er, I forgot. Sorry."
"Another insult!"
"It was not meant that way," Smith protested.
"I could overlook it," Chiun said guardedly. "Perhaps."
"I would appreciate that, Master Chiun."
"In return for Beasleyland."
"Absolutely not!"
"Then a castle to be named later," Chiun said quickly.
Smith hesitated. Adjusting his glasses, his face grew reflective.
"Possibly," he said.
Before Remo could open his mouth to object, Harold Smith said, "Beasley World is thick with search teams and rescue trucks. We must move quickly, if we are to seize all evidence in this matter."
As they approached it, Sam Beasley World seemed more and more to resemble some fanciful lunar crater. Black smoke toiled upward, throwing the crumbled and drunken ramparts of Sorcerer's Castle into intermittent shadow.
The park was too big to rope off, but state police cars blocked the main entrance road.
Harold Smith offered a genuine-looking photo ID that said FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY in intimidatingly large letters.
"How bad?" he asked.
"A lot of bodies down there, sir," a trooper said respectfully. "No survivors so far."
"Good," said Chiun.
"Hush," said Remo.
"We're going to look around," said Smith.
"The area isn't safe, sir."
"We'll chance it," Smith said.
They were waved through.
"My poor kingdom," Chiun said forlornly, his button nose pressed to the car window. "It is unsalvageable."
"Too bad," Remo said dryly. "The world really needed an Assassin's World. Right, Smitty?"
Smith said nothing. His pinched face was grim. The carnival desolation was appalling. The summit of Star Mountain had fallen in and was smoking like a volcano.
Remo fell silent.
They found a flat place in the outermost parking lot and picked their way over the jagged crevices and upflung shelves of asphalt. All around them lay ruins. The ground had settled alarmingly. Phantom Lagoon had been drained of water, like a bizarre swimming pool. Monkey Domain was emitting a confusion of monkey chatterings and yeeps, evidently coming from tape machines all playing at different speeds-some too fast, some too slow.
Over by Horrible House-now a collapsed house of cards-rescue teams were extracting floppy bodies from a crack in the ground. None was human. A team of paramedics was trying to shock a seven-foot-tall rabbit back to life by applying electric paddles to his furry chest. They gave up when his long pink ears caught fire..
"Anybody trapped below when the ground fell in didn't have a prayer," Remo said quietly.
Smith asked, "Can you find the section where you emerged from underground?"
Remo led them to the disposal building that masqueraded as a fun house. It was in a quadrant of the park that was not as deeply sunken. They stepped in cautiously.
"We came up this tube," Remo said, indicating the pneumatic mechanism.
Smith peered down unhappily. "I am not sure I can negotiate this."
"No sweat. We'll give you a hand." And Remo cheerfully tucked a protesting Harold Smith under one arm. Paling, Smith closed his eyes.
Smith experienced a brief sensation of descent as Remo climbed downward. Then he found himself being set on his feet, as the Master of Sinanju stepped off the broken handholds in the side of the pipe.
Remo grinned. "How was that?" he asked, leading the way.
Smith straightened his coat and followed stiffly. He almost stepped on the body of Leopoldo Zorilla, but the Master of Sinanju assisted him around the tangled form.
At the broken end of the pipe, Smith endured the ignominy of being lowered by both hands to the polished white-tile floor, now shrouded in darkness.
He still clutched his briefcase, and from it he extracted a penlight. It whisked light about the long tunnel curiously.
"Remarkable," he said.
Remo and Chiun dropped lightly to his side. Remo said, "Follow me."
They walked.
Remo looked around. "Funny, this part isn't crushed flat like the rest."
"These walls are heavily reinforced," Smith said carefully. "It is my guess that this is not Utiliduck, but a secret wing."
"This is perfectly sensible," Chiun murmured.
"It is?" said Remo.
"All ducks have wings. Heh heh heh."
Remo rolled his eyes in silence.
They came to a sealed door. It resembled the guillotinelike entrance portal-a slab of steel plate, set in the grooves of a massive stainless-steel frame.
Smith's tiny ray found a magnetic keycard slot.
"Without a passcard, we cannot enter," he said.
"Wanna bet?" said Remo.
He placed his hands against the door, balanced himself on his feet, and pressed inward.
Nothing happened for some moments. Then Remo moved his flattened palms upward.
Smith clapped his hands over his ears to protect them from the interminable scream of tortured metal. The portal lifted, seemingly impelled by nothing more than the surface tension of Remo's flat palms.
When he had the door halfway up, Remo turned and said, "Slide under. I can't hold this thing forever."
Smith ducked under and in. The Master of Sinanju swept after him.
Remo gave the door a final lurch upward and rolled under the descending portal, which came roaring down behind him with a harsh, ringing clang.
The room was a nest of electronic equipment. Video monitors were lined up on overhead racks. Most were dead or filled with static. Tape spools gleamed. The console chairs were empty. There were no bodies to be seen, either.
Idly, Remo stabbed a button labeled TOM THUMB PAVILION.
To his surprise, a red light winked on and a set of reels began to turn.
Over the loudspeaker, a song warbled.
"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"
"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"
"That is not right," Smith murmured.
Remo snapped the tape off, growling, "Tell me about it. Just when I got that thing out of my mind."
"What?"
"Never mind. It's been a long day."
Smith found another door. It was marked ANIMATION.
"Odd," he said. "I did not know the cartoonists worked underground."
They entered the door. It opened easily.
The room looked more like the War Room of a military base than an artist's studio.
In the center of a long table lay a topographically exact scale model of the island of Cuba.
"Here's your proof, Smitty," Remo said, indicating the walls with a wave of his hand.
Smith used his penlight. His brow furrowed at what he saw. Almost every square foot of wall space was covered with sheets of paper. Each sheet contained a drawing of some sort. They formed long rows of continuously depicted action.
"Odd," Smith said. "These appear to be storyboards."
"What?"
"Storyboards. Before they animate a cartoon, professional cartoonists work out the action in separate drawings, much like a comic strip," Smith explained.
"I say it's a War Room," Remo said firmly.
Chiun was examining the drawings critically.
"I do not understand this story," he said.
"That is because it is not a story," Smith said firmly. "These are the invasion plans for Cuba. Very clever. Instead of committing them to paper in text form, they worked them out as step-by-step cartoon illustrations."
"That is the goofiest thing I ever heard of," Remo said.
"It is not so farfetched," Smith suggested. "During World War Two, Sam Beasley loaned the government many of his artists for the war effort. They designed topographical models of Japanese-held Pacific Islands which were used in planning sessions, as well as socalled 'nose art' for bomber planes and camouflage details. He was quite a patriot."
Smith moved along one wall, following a line of drawings. They seemed to show a coastal area under invasion by waves of ocean-going military barges, while being defended by a large armed force.
"This calls for an amphibious landing at . . ." He went from the end of a row back to the beginning of the wall, to read the next tier of drawings.
Smith gasped. ". . . Zapata Swamp! At the Bay of Pigs!"
"Explains why Ultima Hora was training in a swamp," Remo said. "But why are these guys dressed like pirates?"
Smith came to Remo's side. His penlight followed the drawing sequence. In this sequence, the invading forces were standing up in their landing craft and returning fire. They wore costumes Remo had seen in the Buccaneers of the Bahamas attraction.
"This appears to be a secondary force," Smith ventured. "It is too small to be the spearhead for a fullscale invasion. But where is the main thrust?"
Chiun's voice piped up.
"Remo, if an animator is one who draws cartoons, what is a reanimator?"
"Huh?"
"What is a reanimator?" repeated Chiun, indicating the sign on another door. It read: REANIMATION.
Remo and Smith joined him at the door. It looked like a submarine bulkhead door. It was locked, accessible only by passcard. Or as it turned out, by a fist that packed the power of a sledge-hammer. Remo casually punched the door off its hinges. It rang for a good half minute, even after they had stepped over it into the room beyond.
The Reanimation Room was lit up like a hospital. In fact, it looked a lot like an operating room. There was an operating table, an autoclave for sterilizing instruments, a defibrillator for restarting a stopped heart, and other medical paraphernalia.
"Must have an emergency generator," Smith mused, thumbing off his penlight. His face in the harsh white light appeared puzzled and sharp.
"Maybe it's an emergency hospital," Remo suggested. "Like a MASH unit."
"It does not appear to be portable," Smith said. He followed his inquisitive nose to a long stainless-steel capsule that sat in a corner. It might have been an old-fashioned iron lung, except that it was completely enclosed and stood upright. There was a face-sized porthole on one side near the top.
"Bomb?" Remo wondered.
Smith checked the support equipment. Tubes and coils ran from the long chamber to a framework of gleaming, cylinders like oxygen tanks. They were labeled. One said OXYGEN. The others were labeled LIQUID NITROGEN. Various old-fashioned gauges were calibrated for pressure and temperature. The needles were dead.
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