Chained Reaction td-34

by Warren Murphy

  Smith breathed deeply of the still chilly morning air, laced with salt from the nearby sound, and felt vaguely guilty about being on the golf course. He had once played golf regularly, once a week without fail, but in recent years, the work of CURE had multiplied like cancer cells and he found it impossible to scrape together the time away from his desk.

  But this day he had decided just to go out and do it. There were a lot of things to think about

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  and he had to be able to think without interruption. This was his justification.

  Remo had vanished; Chiun had vanished with him. CURE's killer arm was no more and while Remo had been threatening and trying to quit ever since he'd been recruited, this time there was a reality to it that disturbed Smith. For without an enforcement arm, CURE would be nothing1, have nothing to distinguish it from the laundry ticket of government agencies, all tripping over each other, all gathering the same intelligence, and all just sitting on it because they were afraid to act on it.

  And there was the raid in Norfolk. He would have liked to pick up the telephone and tell Remo to get down there. But there was no longer any Remo to call.

  He was worried and, as he carefully placed his ball on the white wooden tee that some other golfer had casually dropped, Smith hoped that his worry would not affect his golf game. Assuming he had a golf game left. He prided himself that he had once played the game well.

  The first hole was a straight-away 385-yard par four. A pro would play it with a 240-yard drive, a 140-yard seven iron, and two putts.

  Harold Smith cranked up and swung at the ball. He hit it clean, right on the screws, straight down the center of the fairway. The ball hit 135 yards out and rolled for 40 more yards before stopping.

  The drive almost brought a smile to Smith's face. His game was still intact. Worry had not ruined it. He politely handed his driver to the caddy and walked off after his ball. He knew how he

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  would play the round. He would not par a hole, but he would riot double-bogey a hole either. He would shoot every hole in exactly one over par. He would two putt every green.

  Par for this course was 72; he would shoot 90. He always shot 90, and, if he had wanted to, he could have mailed his scores in. Ninety seemed to him a perfectly good score. Consistency. The idea of hitting great shots, miracle shots, and using them to balance off your occasional bad shots never occurred to him. He liked it the way he did it. Everything straight down the middle.

  But what about Norfolk?

  A military operation. There had to be a training base. But where ?

  He used a fairway wood for his second shot and hit it straight toward the green. It traveled with roll another 130 yards. He was 110 yards from the green.

  Without being asked, the caddy handed Smith a four iron, which he swung and laced his ball onto the green twelve feet from the hole. He putted to within a foot, then dropped the short second putt and scored a five.

  Sullenly, the caddy took the ball from the cup, replaced the flagstick and handed the ball toward Smith.

  But Smith was not looking at the caddy. He was staring off at the trees and dense woods bordering both sides of the narrow first fairway. An idea was trickling through.

  "Son," Smith told the caddy. "I've decided not to play anymore today."

  The pimple-faced boy sighed and Smith took it mistakenly for disappointment.

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  "Now obviously I can't tip you the full fifty cents because you only caddied one hole," Smith said.

  The boy nodded.

  "What do you think would be fair?" Smith asked.

  The boy shrugged. He had already decided that he would pay Smith up to two dollars, just to be rid of him, so he could get back to the caddy's shack and maybe get a paying customer.

  Smith looked at the ball in the caddy's hand.

  "I just paid twenty-five cents for that ball," Smith said. "Suppose you keep it and we call it even?"

  The caddy looked at the ball. The crescent slice on it seemed to smile up at him.

  "Gee, Doctor Smith, that's wonderful. I can probably resell it again and make ten, maybe even fifteen, cents."

  "Just what I thought," said Smith. "At ten cents, that would average out to a dollar-eighty for eighteen holes. At fifteen cents, it would be two dollars and seventy cents."

  Smith paused, and appeared to be calculating. For a frightened moment, the caddy wondered if Smith was going to want him to split the proceeds of the resale. Smith was thinking about exactly that. Then he shook his head firmly. "No," he said. "You keep it all." "Thank you, Doctor Smith." "Think nothing of it," Smith said. He walked off the green back toward the clubhouse.

  "I'll see you next week," he called over his shoulder.

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  He did not hear the caddy groan behind him, then turn and throw the ball into the woods.

  After the ten-minute drive back to his office in the old sanitarium building, Smith surprised his secretary polishing her nails on company time. He cocked an eyebrow at Miss Purvish, who looked as if she would be glad to drink the nail polish, anything to make it disappear.

  "What happened to playing golf?" she managed to ask, hastily capping the bottle of polish.

  "It's too nice a day to play golf," said Smith. "Don't disturb me unless it is absolutely necessary."

  Inside his office, Smith sat behind the large, desk, his back to the one-way windows that looked out over the Sound, and began planning.

  A military maneuver meant a military installation somewhere. And a military installation meant buildings and plumbing and access and water lines and sewerage.

  Smith pressed a button. A panel opened in his desk and a computer console rose in front of him, like a silent servant awaiting instructions.

  Smith asked it for the number of areas within a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile radius of Norfolk, large enough and isolated enough to hold a secret military installation. It took seven minutes for the computer to scan its memory maps and tapes and report back that there were seven hundred and forty-six possible locations.

  Smith groaned silently. The task was monumental. Then he took a deep breath. One bite at a time. How many of these areas within the last

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  year, had had extensive building done on them he asked the computer.

  The computer dug deep into the mass of miscellaneous information buried in its tapes.

  Forty-three, it responded, over the television monitor on Smith's desk.

  In how many of the forty-three areas had there been sewerage construction on a scale too big for private homes ?

  As he waited for the computer to answer, Smith idly punched up the list of those kidnapped in Norfolk. He saw the name of Lucius Jackson and next of kin, R. Gonzalez. The name jogged a faint memory switch in the back of his head. R. Gonzalez ? R. Gonzalez ?

  The computer began to clack almost silently as an answer appeared on the television screen.

  There were three areas that fit Smith's requirements. One in Virginia, one in North Carolina, and one in South Carolina.

  Smith leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. A secret installation. Which of the three, if any, had no record of road construction in the last year ?

  The computer answered quickly. The piney woods of South Carolina.

  That would be it, Smith thought. For a secret installation, they would not build access roads. He double-checked the information, and asked the computer if, in the last year, there had been an increase in helicopter flights over the piney woods area in South Carolina.

  A six hundred-percent increase, the computer told him instantly.

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  Smith arranged his mouth in what, for him, passed for a smile. The helicopter flights nailed it down. Without roads, they would be moving their men and materials in and out by helicopter. That was it. The piney woods of South Carolina.

  He was about to erase the information he had just obtained when he paused, remembered, and asked the machin
e for a readout on R. Gonzalez, Norfolk, Virginia.

  The machine replied in twenty seconds. "R. Gonzalez. Ruby Jackson Gonzalez." Twenty-three. Wig Manufacturer, owner of two real estate agencies, director of four banks, Triple A from Dun and Bradstreet. Subject former CIA agent, recently released from service. Last assignment, Baqia, where came into contact with agency personnel."

  Smith gave a triumphant hiss, punched the buttons that cleared the computer's memory of the questions he had asked, and lowered it back into the desk.

  Ruby Gonzalez. He had spoken to her when Remo and Chiun were in trouble on the Baqian mission. She had saved their lives.

  And she was involved in this; her brother had been seized. She wasn't Remo or Chiun, but she might be able to help.

  Miss Purvish answered the telephone as soon as Smith picked it up.

  "Get me a ticket as soon as possible to Norfolk, Virginia," he said.

  "Right away, Doctor. Round trip?"

  "Yes."

  "Right away, sir."

  She hung up as Smith replaced the phone. He

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  thought of something else and quickly picked up the receiver again.

  "Yes sir," said Miss Purvish.

  "Make that tourist," Smith said.

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  CHAPTER NINE

  The old black woman wore a red bandanna around her head and a house dress that dropped in a straight line, unbroken by any hint of human curve, from neck to feet, encased in plush bedroom slippers at least four sizes too big.

  The pipe she was smoking gave off toxic fumes, the like of which he had not smelled since commandoes under his leadership exploded a German cordite factory in Norway in 1944.

  "I am looking for Ruby Gonzalez," Smith said.

  "C'mon in," said Ruby's mother.

  She led Smith into the parlor of the small apartment and motioned Smith to the chair opposite her blue rocker. He sat down in the overstuffed seat, and sank for what seemed like a full three seconds before stopping.

  "Lemme see yo' hands," Mrs. Gonzalez said.

  "I'm looking for Ruby. She's your daughter, I believe."

  "Ah knows who my daughter is," said Mrs. Gonzalez. "Show me yo' hands."

  Smith struggled back up to the edge of the chair and extended his hands before him. Maybe she was going to tell his fortune. The gaunt black woman took his hands in hers in a grip like a

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  vise. She looked at the palms, then the fingers, then turned them over and looked at the backs, then released them as if they were the most no-account hands she had ever seen.

  "Don' see nothing special about them hands."

  "Why should there be something special about them?"

  "Listen, you. You be here to get Lucius back or not?"

  "I came here to see Ruby. Your daughter."

  "You not the man who gonna get Lucius back?"

  Smith felt as if the old woman was going to tell him something important.

  "Perhaps," he said. "What did Ruby say?"

  "Ruby, she be watching the television and she see these hands, and she say, like, that's him, that's him, he gonna get Lucius back and they be white hands and I think they be yours 'cause all white hands look alike."

  Hands? Hands. What was she talking about?

  "So you be the man or not?" Mrs. Gonzalez asked.

  "I'm going to try to get Lucius back," Smith said.

  "Okay. Befo' Ruby gets home, I wants to talk to yo' about that."

  "Yes?" asked Smith.

  "Why you just not let Lucius be where he be?"

  "You mean not bring him back?"

  The old woman nodded her head. "Ruby miss him a little bit now," she said. "But that not last long. And when she sees how good we does without him, she be happy. He be about the most worthlessest boy ah ever see."

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  Smith nodded.

  "When will Ruby be back?" he asked. "What time's it?"

  Smith glanced at his watch. "Two-thirty." "She be back before six." "Areyou sure?"

  "Sure. That my supper time and that girl never miss fixing my supper." "I'll be back, Mrs. Gonzalez," Smith said.

  "C'mon, c'mon, step on it," Ruby said. "I got to get home to cook Mama's dinner."

  "I'm going eighty-five now," Remo said.

  "Go faster," Ruby said. She folded her arms across her bosom and stared out the front windshield of the white Lincoln Continental.

  "Silence up there," commanded Chiun from the back seat, where he sat by himself, toying with the dials of a CB radio set built into the floor of the vehicle.

  "Don't break that radio," Remo said.

  "It's all right," Ruby said. "I got that for Mama when I take her on drives. She like to talk a lot and I don't like to listen all that much. This way she talks to somebody else."

  Chiun found the "on" switch and the radio squawked into the car, filling it with sound. Ruby reached over the seat and turned down the volume. She handed Chiun the microphone.

  "So now you see why we gotta talk to that tired-ass boss of yours, that Doctor Smith," said Ruby.

  "No, I don't see," said Remo.

  "'Cause we gotta find out where Lucius was

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  taken. And he's got a better chance of knowing than we got," Ruby said.

  "Sorry. No more. I'm done with that gang."

  From the back, Chiun called, "This is very interesting, Remo. This device is obviously hooked up to an insane asylum. I keep getting talked to by idiots who have some kind of handles attached to them."

  "A handle's a name that they call themselves," said Ruby, and to Remo, "You've got to do it."

  "No."

  "For me," said Ruby.

  "Especially not for you."

  "Will you two be quiet?" said Chiun. "Somebody here knows me. He says he is my good buddy."

  "Then for Lucius," Ruby said.

  "The hell with Lucius."

  "Lucius never do nothing to you."

  "Only because I never met him," Remo said.

  "He's my brother. You got to call that Doctor Smith."

  "No."

  "Then I'll call him," said Ruby.

  "You call him and I'll leave." Remo glanced into the rear-view mirror. Chiun had a broad smile on his face and was turning to the left, pressing his face against the window, then leaning across the seat to press his face against the right window, then turning in the seat to smile out the back window.

  "Chiun, why are you smiling?" Remo asked.

  "Some one of my good buddies told me that breaker, breaker, picture taker is here and I am smiling for my picture."

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  "Picture taker?" said Remo. "What's that mean?"

  "That means you going too fast," Ruby screeched. "Slow down."

  Too late. From behind the wall of a bridge overpass, a hidden police car pulled out into the traffic lane, flicked on its siren and flashing lights, and started after the speeding Remo.

  "You just told me I was going too slow," Remo said.

  "Not when there's a cop around. Picture taker, that's radar by the cops. They was warning you on that radio," Ruby said. "Now we gets arrested."

  "Not exactly yet," said Remo as he tromped on the accelerator.

  The trooper disappeared far behind as Remo went over the second hill in the road at one twenty-five, took an exit onto a side road to avoid troopers who would try to pull him off up ahead, and slowed down to ninety for the rest of the trip into Norfolk.

  When they pulled up in front of Ruby's wig factory, Chiun was shouting in Korean into the CB microphone.

  "What's he saying?" Ruby asked.

  "He's telling somebody that if he ever meets him, he will crack him like an egg on the sidewalk," said Remo.

  "Why he say that?"

  "I think somebody called him ratchet jaw," Remo said.

  The taste of salt hung in the air on Jefferson Street like a daytime fog, as Chiun followed Remo and Ruby out of the car.

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  F
rom a small restaurant across the street, Smith saw them, left a nickel tip on the table, and walked quickly outside.

  "Remo," he called.

  The three turned to look at the man in the gray suit coming across the street.

  "Who's that?" Ruby said.

  "As if yon didn't know, fink."

  "Chiun, who's that?" Ruby asked.

  "That is the Emperor Smith," Chiun hissed.

  "That's him? He don't look like much," said Ruby.

  "And when you get to know him, he's even less," Remo said. "What are you doing here, Smitty?"

  "I'm looking for Lucius Jackson," said Smith. "Are you Ruby Gonzalez?"

  Ruby nodded.

  "I think we might find out something about your brother's disappearance in the piney woods in South Carolina," Smith said.

  "We was just there," Ruby said.

  "And?"

  "Wait just a minute," Remo said. "Smitty, we aren't working for you anymore. What are all these questions ?"

  "If we're both trying to do the same thing, doesn't it make sense to do it together?" asked Smith.

  "No," said Remo. "I'm leaving."

  He took a step away but was stopped by Chiun who let loose a flood of Korean words. Remo listened, then turned back to Smith.

  "All right. But you're not in charge here. I am."

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  Smith nodded.

  "We were too late to the piney woods. There was some kind of army there but they moved out. Nobody knows where. But Lucius and the others weren't there at all and that's all we know."

  "An army," Smith said.

  "That's right," said Remo.

  "An army should leave traces," said Smith.

  "Good. You sniff 'em out," Remo said, "and let me know what you find out." He walked into the wig factory. Smith followed him.

  "What'd you tell him to make him change his mind and stay?" Ruby asked Chiun.

  "It is not important," said Chiun.

  "I want to know."

  "I told him that if he left now, he would not discharge his debt to you for saving his life, and he would forever be subject to listen to your squawking screeching voice, yelling in his ears."

  Ruby patted Chiun on the shoulder. "That was a good thing to tell him."

  "And true," said Chiun who still had not figured out a way to get Remo and Ruby together to create a new baby for Sinanju.