Lords of the Earth td-61

by Warren Murphy

  "That's awful," Dara said. "At least he might show some respect."

  "You are young and beautiful," said Chiun, "and wise beyond your years."

  "That's very touching," she said.

  "Where's the lab?" Remo asked.

  "Go find it yourself," she snapped.

  "Please," said Chiun. "We must understand and bear with the rude and the ungrateful. That is the price of wisdom."

  "Little Father, do you want to tell her what the garbage was that I refused to take out?" Remo asked Chiun.

  "He's your father and you treat him this way?" asked Dara Worthington, shocked.

  "I am his father, not by blood, but by my efforts in trying to teach him the good ways."

  Dara understood that. The old man was so beautiful. As they walked past the security devices that now protected every laboratory in the complex, Chiun told her how he had given so much to the younger man who appreciated nothing. Dara thought that Remo was very much like all the men in her life.

  She glanced at Remo but he was ignoring her again. He was truly interested in the laboratory complex because when Smith had given them this assignment, the CURE director had seemed genuinely despairing.

  It was not fear, just a quiet desperation. Remo had seen it in men's eyes before. They knew death was coming and their motions became not faster, but slower. Even their thinking seemed to tail off as if they did not want to spend energy on a life that was already lost. Smith had acted that way. He seemed to be a man who was watching his world die around him and Remo had picked up his sense of danger, the numb uselessness of despair. That made Smith appear aged.

  "Where is Dr. Ravits' lab?" Remo asked Dara.

  "It's the one you and your father will be in," said Dara. "You have to pass through extra doors to get to it. The FBI wouldn't even let the doctor leave the lab, so I guess you two won't be able to either."

  "The FBI kept him a prisoner?" Remo said.

  "You don't know Dr. Ravits," said Dara, cutting off the conversation with a cold smile.

  But Remo did know Dr. Ravits. He knew when he was born, when and where he went to school, and how he became an entomologist. He also knew the successes and failures of his career.

  Smith had told Remo everything when he came to the oceanfront cottage to give him and Chiun their new assignment. As Smith had explained:

  There was a beetle that traditionally had fed on the crops of three tribes in central Africa. The beetle lived in cycles as it had for tens of thousands of years, reproducing rapidly and destroying the crops. When the crops dwindled too much, some chemical reaction would take place in the beetle, telling it to decrease because there was not enough food to support its numbers. Relieved of the pressure from the beetles, the crops rebounded and increased and for a few years the tribes fed well. But then the beetles received the signal to multiply, as if they had sensed the greater amount of food available, and the plague would again hit.

  Man and insect had lived like this for thousands of years. Then, suddenly, the beetles did not decrease as they should. The IHAEO began to study the creature. If they could find the chemical signals that made it stop reproducing, they could stop the new plague, and keep the beetle population in check forever.

  But then came the horror, Smith had told Remo and Chiun. The real nightmare. For every change the IHAEO scientists made in the Ung beetle, the insect made a counterchange: It became a biological chess game with move and countermove, and the most horrifying thing was that the insects' moves came quickly, within three generations, which was only a matter of months. It was an adaptability to man's attacks that man had never seen before in an insect.

  Smith had said, "The one saving grace about this disaster is that the Ung beetle is confined to Central Africa. But given its resistant quality, and its speed of adaptability to other insects, mankind all over the world could literally be deprived of crops. That means we could all starve to death. The tragedy of Central Africa would be the world's tragedy. So now you know why the work of the IHAEO is so important."

  "I still don't know what you want me for," Remo had said. "Get a bug doctor."

  "Entomologist," Smith said. "We have them. And we are losing them."

  "Who'd want to kill a bug doctor?" Remo asked.

  "Entomologist," Smith said.

  "Right. That."

  "We don't know. But someone is. Despite protection around the world, someone is getting to the scientists. It's as if mankind has only one life raft and some lunatics are trying to punch holes in it."

  Despite the odds, Smith had explained, mankind might still win. A Dr. Ravits had developed a biochemical substance called a pheromone. It attracted the beetles to each other, but its side effects overcame the beetles' adaptability and made their own defenses work against them.

  Chiun, who had been staring angrily at the body behind the computer, entered the conversation. In Korean, he told Remo: "Do not ask Emperor Smith what he is talking about lest he explain it."

  In English, Chiun said to Smith: "How fascinating, O wise emperor."

  "I won't go into what a polypusside is," said Smith.

  "As you will, O gracious emperor," Chiun said.

  "What we want is for you to get into the lab and whenever they strike again, go after him. So far, they've gotten through every government's defense system and we still don't know who they are. This Dr. Ravits says the pheromone is about ready to go. It has to be protected."

  "They were attacked today," Remo said, "but the lab people escaped, right?"

  "Yes," Smith said. "The FBI has been able to protect them so far. This might strike you as strange, but that's precisely because the defense has been successful so far in America that we feel now is the time to change it."

  Chiun almost blinked in surprise. In Korean he let out, "They are finally thinking."

  "Yes," said Remo. He understood. There had never been a wall that was successful over a long period of time. Even the brilliantly designed tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs had, over the centuries, given up their treasures to robbers. The world always changed and he who sought to survive had to change also, before it was too late. It was why Chiun had tried to buy a computer.

  "It's a good idea, Smitty," Remo told Smith. "You relax now and leave it to us." He tried to smile. "It's taken too long for me to break you in. I don't want to work with anyone else."

  "I'm afraid someday you will have to. I'm getting too old and you don't seem to be," Smith said.

  "Oh no, gracious emperor," Chiun said. "You are like the flower that blooms more beautifully as the days go on."

  "You are most kind, Master of Sinanju," said Smith.

  And in Korean, Chiun muttered when Smith left: "See, Remo, what happens when you eat the wrong meat. See? Leaving now on those shuffling feet is a hamburger eater."

  "I guess so," said Remo unenthusiastically. But he felt for Smith; he felt for someone who cared about the things Remo still cared about. The world was worth saving, especially the part of it Remo loved: the United States.

  "I guess," Remo repeated sadly. He was going to do this assignment for Smith because it might just be the old man's last, and so he and Chiun went on ahead to the IHAEO labs and met Dara Worthington.

  Now they followed her into Dr. Ravits' laboratory. Ravits was looking at a computer printout as he chewed great mouthfuls of chocolate cake and drank a glass of sugared soda with caffeine additives. His face looked like a World War I battlefield with craters left by triumphant acne.

  His hands shook and his white lab coat was dirty. Dr. Ravits apparently did not believe strongly in changing clothes or bathing.

  In the hallway, Dara Worthington had warned Remo and Chiun that Ravits simply lost contact with anything that wasn't connected with his work. He was not basically a slob, just a person engaged in work so consuming that he didn't have time for the rest of the world. He tended to eat cake and soda because he never quite remembered to eat a meal. Once, when they had been in Russia, Dara had brought him a wa
rm meal on a platter and forced him to eat.

  "Have some salad," she had said.

  "Will you marry me?" Ravits had said.

  "I only said have some salad."

  "You are the most meaningful relationship I've had in my life."

  "I'm the only one and all I did was tell you to eat."

  "Then you won't marry me?" he said.

  "No," said Dara.

  "Then would you empty the wastebaskets, please," Dr. Ravits had said. "They're getting full."

  Ravits looked up from the printout as she brought Remo and Chiun into the lab.

  "These two entomologists are here to assist you, Dr. Ravits," she said. She seemed to thrust forward, stretching her bosom against her prim white blouse. The laboratory smelled as though it had housed an electrical fire for the last month. Remo realized it was Ravits.

  "Good," said Ravits. He nodded at Remo and Chiun. "I think you two ought to know we have lost several people from this lab to terrorists, yes?"

  "We know," said Remo.

  "I'll leave you three together," said Dara, bowing out. "Dr. Ravits, you ought to get along very well with Dr. Chiun. I found him most pleasant."

  Remo ignored the insult. He glanced at the windows and noticed the very small sensing devices that would set off alarms. The glass was thick enough to bounce back a howitzer shell. The air conditioning did not bring in outside air, which might be poisoned, but recirculated the old air with infusions of oxygen, and other elements removed.

  It looked safe enough. A black cat with white paws purred contentedly next to a small heater in the corner.

  "That's my best friend," Ravits said. "Cats are wonderful pets. They leave you alone." Ravits smiled once as if imitating an expression he once saw in a photograph and went back to his computer readout.

  "Is there a phone in here?" Remo asked.

  "There should be. I guess so. I don't use it. Nobody I want to call. Do you always talk so much?"

  "We're etymologists," said Chiun, folding his long fingernails into his kimono. He pronounced the syllables of the word very slowly.'

  "Then what are you doing here?" said Ravits. "Etymology is the study of words."

  "The other one," Remo said. "Entomologists?" Ravits asked. "Right," said Remo. "That."

  "Makes sense. That's why you're with me," Ravits said and put his soul back into the reproductive habits of the Ung beetle.

  Remo found the telephone in the corner. He dialed the number Smith had given him. It didn't work. He often got the code numbers wrong, but this one Smith had written down.

  He dialed again but it still didn't answer. He would have to go outside to telephone. Ravits did not know where the nearest outside phone was. The smell from his body reeked through the small lab.

  "You stay here and I'll check in with Smitty," Remo told Chiun.

  "I will stand on the outside of the door where the air is better," Chiun said.

  "Remo found a working phone in the lab office next to Ravits'. Chiun waited outside by the only entrance and everything else was sealed. Ravits was safe. This telephone worked.

  "Yes?" Smith's voice clicked.

  "Just wanted to let you know that everything is fine." Remo said.

  "Good."

  "He's in a room with only one entrance and Chiun is standing there."

  "Good," said Smith.

  "We'll just wait for them to attack."

  "Good," said Smith.

  "How does Long Island Sound look?" Remo asked.

  "I'm not at Folcroft," Smith said.

  "In the Islands?" Remo asked.

  "St. Martin. The computer backup area," Smith said.

  "Good. Enjoy the weather," Remo said. "Listen, Smitty, don't worry, all right?"

  "All right," Smith said.

  Remo hung up the telephone and walked out to the fluorescent-lit hallway, so welded with steel that it looked like the inside of a submarine.

  "We'll just wait," Remo told Chiun. He felt good about having been able to reassure Smith.

  "Not inside," Chiun said. "I will not wait in there."

  "Inside," said Remo.

  "You wait inside," Chiun said. "I will wait here." Remo opened the door to the lab. The computer printout that Ravits had been poring over was now red and glistening. A pile of what looked like butcher's garbage rested on the paper. A pale shard of pinkish skin caught Remo's eye. The skin had acne.

  The pile was what was left of Dr. Ravits.

  Chapter 4

  The problem was solved.

  Finally, after years of ad hoc plugging of ad hoc gaps, the security problems with CURE's computers were solved.

  Dr. Harold W. Smith walked out onto the white sandy beach of the perfect Caribbean bay of Grand Case on the French side of the Antilles island of St. Martin. He would get some sun. He had done a good job.

  He felt that if he died now, in his last moment he could look back on his life and say he had done a good job for his country and even for the human race.

  He had been pleased by Remo's phone call, too. Smith had been worried because it had been a risk to lift the FBI protection that had been working so well, but it would have been a greater risk to leave it the way it was.

  Nobody could have blamed him if he had ignored the danger and left things along. But it was precisely because he had never tried to enhance his career that he had been chosen, many years ago, by a now-dead President, to run the new organization to fight America's enemies.

  No, Smith thought, he had only done what he had to do. The real courage had been shown by the President. Smith had asked for an urgent meeting. Because of the nature of CURE, the meeting had to be kept secret even from the President's staff, and that could be sticky. The problem, even with trusted staff members, was that the more trusted they were, the more they felt they had to know everything. And that was how information got leaked, by too many people knowing it. Smith explained that they had to meet away from the President's staff.

  "How?" the President asked. "Do I send them away?"

  "No, Mr. President," Smith had said. "You leave them at the center of things. You see, their interest goes up when they feel left out of things. So you go on vacation, sir. Go to your ranch in California and then talk to the new assistant gardener."

  "You want me to have you put on the ranch payroll?"

  "I want you to have no contact with me, sir."

  "You can't get on the ranch payroll without being checked out," the President said, then paused. "Oh, I forgot. You control some of the people who do the checking out, don't you?"

  Harold Smith did not answer that. He did not control the people who investigated the information on his employment application; he controlled the information itself. Everything worked on computers, and CURE had been using them even before the Defense Department. CURE had always been ahead of the rest of the world, which was how it had been able to function with so few knowing of its existence. And a computer had no compulsion to share information with a best friend.

  CURE lived and died by these computers. It took only a simple pushing of a few keys to give Harold W. Smith his clearance to be an assistant gardener at the President's California ranch, after first telling the ranch's head gardener that he needed an assistant.

  So when the President flew to California for a brief rest, the first thing he did was examine the rosebushes along the stockade-style fence.

  An elderly gardener was clipping around the thorns. The President sidled over to him and for all the world looked as if he were discussing rosebushes with him because every once in a while the gardener would gesticulate with his pruning shears. But the conversation went like this:

  "Mr. President, I am going to ask you to take a risk that on its face might not seem logical."

  "Go ahead. Try me," the President said with his usual good humor.

  "You're familiar with the International Health, Agricultural and Educational Organization?"

  "Sure. The thing with four thousand overpaid people
who make a profession out of attacking America with America's money."

  "I'm talking about their entomology labs."

  "The one part of the whole shebang that works. And someone is trying to kill them. I've seen the reports and I've got the FBI protecting the lab. They're doing it well, too. Even the KGB couldn't handle it."

  "I'm asking you to call off the FBI and let us take care of it."

  "Why?"

  "Because sooner or later, the FBI won't be able to protect them," Smith said, and explained the dangers that the labs were fighting. The only real defense would be to get at the people who were killing the scientists. The FBI couldn't do that and, no matter how good the defense, eventually the labs would be penetrated.

  The President looked puzzled. "Why can't we leave the FBI where it is and just go after the crazies, whoever they are?"

  "Because then they'll delay attacking. But it'll still happen eventually and we have to prevent that," Smith said.

  "Are you going to use those people?" the President asked, referring to the two men who seemed to be able to penetrate anything at will, including the White House. He had seen them operate once and immediately wanted to know if America could get more of them. He had looked sad when Smith said there were only two in the world like that.

  Smith nodded and the President said, "Do you know what will happen if someone else is killed and it comes out that I ordered the defenses away?"

  "I think so," Smith said.

  "I've got a press that would love to hang me. This time they wouldn't have to make up anything."

  "I know that."

  "How sure are you that your plan will work?" the President asked.

  "I know this. If we go on the way we're going, they'll strike again. They're incredibly clever and seem to be able to penetrate anything when they want. How they got into Russia, I'll never know."

  "So you want me to stick my neck out?"

  "Yes, sir," said Smith. "Only your direct orders can get the FBI out of the way."

  "How bad is this bug business?" the President wanted to know.

  "It could be all the marbles; Mr. President. Right now, the problem areas are in the Third World but it could spread." Harold W. Smith clipped another twig of the rosebush, absentmindedly trying to remember whether he was supposed to clip above or below a main stem. It didn't matter. He would be gone by nightfall.