The Color of Fear td-99

by Warren Murphy

  "Zey 'ave giant uncouth cartoon faces on zem."

  "Watch what you say about an American original," said Remo. "Besides, you have to admit the light show was spectacular."

  "I saw only zat it was very bright."

  "Struck me as more soothing than bright."

  "What is soothing about bright white light?"

  "White? It's pink."

  "Oh. I am, how you say, daltonienne?"

  "Say what?"

  "Color-blind."

  "Must be nice," said Remo.

  She looked at him questioningly. "Was ze bright object zat fell from ze black 'elicopter also pink?"

  "How do you know it was black if you're colorblind?"

  "Answer my question, s'il vous plait."

  "No. It was yellow. Petrified the guys it landed on, too."

  "You say yellow?"

  "Yes."

  "But now pink?"

  "Yeah."

  "Ze yellow scared some men, and now when ze pink light comes zey all lay down zeir arms and cease fighting?"

  "I don't know if there's a connection, but sure, it might be that way." Remo looked at the girl under the beret more closely. "Anyone ever tell you you have a nice accent?"

  "Yes," Chiun chimed in, "you have a very nice accent for a Frankish wench."

  The girl glowered at them.

  "What's your name?" asked Remo.

  "Avril Mai."

  "Nice name."

  "Yes, you have a very nice name for a lying Frank," said Chiun.

  Remo and the girl looked at the Master of Sinanju.

  "She has just told you her name is April May," Remo told Chiun.

  "Must be a Taurus. Are you a Taurus?"

  "I am a Cartesian."

  "It is an impossible name for a Frank," said Chiun without rancor. His hazel eyes swept back to the warm pink shine coming up out of the Crater.

  The girl began backing away. "I must be going," she said quickly. "I ' ave a story I must phone in."

  "Good luck," said Remo.

  "Au revoir," said Chiun, waving her away with a graceful flutter of fingernails.

  As she walked away, she began hissing words into satellite phones intently.

  "What's she saying?" asked Remo.

  " 'La charade se perpetre avec lumieres de tres brillantes couleurs. Les lumieres de tres brillantes couleurs sont la clef'," Chiun repeated.

  "In English, I mean."

  "The charade is being perpetrated with very bright colored lights. The bright colored lights are the key."

  "What charade?"

  "I do not know," said the Master of Sinanju, who had caught the eye of Mongo Mouse and exchanged friendly waves with the upright rodent. "And I care even less."

  Chapter 12

  Dr. Harold W. Smith was tracking the progress of the Second American Civil War on his office computer when he got the call.

  On an amber map of the continental United States he was carefully plotting the position and movement of the converging forces.

  The rogue Rhode Island National Guard unit was still camped out on the District of Columbia side of the Potomac, just above Arlington, under the watchful eye of D.C. Capitol Police while elsewhere other units were on the move.

  It was an astonishing sight. On the screen, which was buried under the black tempered glass of his desktop where only Smith could see it, it looked as if mighty armies were on the march to Petersburg, Virginia.

  Smith had assigned tags to each unit. The Confederate regiments were represented by amber numbers while the Union troops were assigned letters. These were keyed to a list of regimental names that kept scrolling by on the left-hand side of the screen like marching soldiers.

  That they went by designations like the 13th North Carolina Unreconstructed Signal Corps, 5th Tennessee Butternut Guerrillas or the 501st Motorized Michigan Touring Teamsters did not detract from the deadly earnestness of the situation.

  Bands of men with guns were converging on Virginia, armed and intent upon fighting the Civil War all over again. Passions had been inflamed. In many states, both North and South, law-enforcement agencies, unable to put aside their sympathies, refused to intercept or put down these rogue units of weekend warriors.

  And from Petersburg National Battlefield was coming the first sketchy reports of a pitched battle under way.

  It was high noon. Memorial Day, 1995. Perhaps the last Memorial Day in U.S. history if the tides of battle were not quickly reversed.

  When the blue contact telephone began ringing, Harold Smith was so intent he didn't register the sound at first. It took three rings before his aged hand reached out and brought the receiver to his pinched gray face.

  Harold Smith was a New England Yank, but his colors were Confederate gray. He wore a gray threepiece suit enlivened only by his Darmouth college tie, which was hunter green. His eyes were gray behind rimless glasses. His sparse hair was a grayish dusting on his head. Even his dry skin had a grayish cast, the manifestation of a congenital heart defect.

  When he spoke, his voice was as flinty as the granite hills that had birthed him.

  "Yes?"

  "Hey, Smitty," said Remo in a bright voice.

  "Remo, I have reports of a battle going on at Petersburg National Battlefield."

  "Guess that's why they call it a battlefield, right?"

  "Remo, this is serious!"

  "No," corrected Remo, "this is over."

  "Over?"

  "Over. As in the boys can start going home now."

  "But I have reports of other reenactment units moving on Virginia."

  "Well, when they get here they can move right out again. The Blue and the Gray have patched things up."

  "What happened?"

  "Mongo Mouse dropped by, and everybody came to their senses."

  "Remo, you are babbling."

  A squeaky voice piped up. "No, Emperor, everything Remo says is true. Mongo came, along with Dingbat and others of his gallant company."

  "They dropped down in balloons," Remo added.

  "Balloons, Remo?"

  "Big pink ones. Lit up like bottles of calamine lotion with light bulbs inside."

  "Remo, you are not yourself."

  "Hey, I just had a pleasant afternoon. Don't spoil it with your ulcerous crabbing."

  "Ulcerous crabbing? For the first time in over a century we have civil war!"

  "I told you," Remo said patiently. "It's over. It was a great big misunderstanding. When the balloons showed up, everyone simmered right down. Mickey Weisinger made a big reconciliation speech and won 'em all over. They've laid down their muskets, and there won't be any more trouble. Chiun and I hardly had to do anything. Isn't that great?"

  There was a pause on the line.

  "Remo," Smith said in a cautious voice, "I have some bad news for you."

  "Shoot."

  "I have hit another stone wall in the search for your parents."

  "Aw. Too bad. But I know you'll keep trying, Smitty."

  "That is just it," pressed Smith. "I have reached an absolute dead end. There is no other avenue to search."

  "Gee, that's disappointing," said Remo.

  "I am calling off the search. Do not ever raise this subject again."

  Remo's voice diminished as he turned from the telephone and said, "Chiun, he's calling off the search for my parents."

  "At least he tried," said Chiun without concern.

  Remo's voice came back to the telephone receiver. "I know you tried, Smitty. Appreciate it. Really."

  "Remo, you are not talking or acting like yourself."

  "Who else would I talk and act like? Daniel Boone?"

  "You are too calm, too relaxed, too accepting."

  "I told you I feel pretty mellow."

  "Remo, what happened out there today?"

  "Told you. The war's over. Hallelujah."

  "Remo, did anything unusual happen out in the park?"

  "Well, lemme see," Remo said slowly. "I can't think of anything
except the yellow bomb."

  "What yellow bomb?"

  "You hung up before I could mention it last time. A black helicopter buzzed the Crater, dropped this thing that looked like a traffic light except all the lights were yellow and when it hit, everything turned really yellow."

  "What do you mean-everything turned really yellow?"

  "We were running away because we thought it was a bomb."

  "It was," inserted Chiun calmly.

  "It didn't explode. But there was flash, I guess. The sky turned yellow. So did the grass and trees and everything. Then the Union prisoners started pouring out of the pit, and were they scared. Every one of them babbling about the yellow light."

  "Then what happened?"

  "Chiun and I went to investigate and when we got to the Crater, the bomb or whatever it was started screaming and melting into a puddle of slag."

  "In other words, it self-destructed?"

  "Now that you put it that way, yeah. Sure."

  Chiun's thin voice added, "You forgot about the man in the pit, Remo. Tell Emperor Smith about him."

  "Oh, right," said Remo. "Before the bomb melted. We found a Union guy in the pit. He wasn't like the others, who were scared. He was kinda down."

  "Down? Do you mean depressed?"

  "Yeah, and he claimed after the yellow light exploded in his face, everything turned blue. That part doesn't make much sense, I know."

  "Actually it does," said Smith.

  "It does?"

  "Yes, it was a phenomenon of color where if one stares at a certain color for a long time, then looks away, he will see the complementary color as an afterimage in his retina."

  "Blue complements yellow?"

  "I believe it does," said Smith, saving his US. map file and bringing up another file.

  "Then I guess red insults green, huh?" Remo chuckled.

  "Describe this yellow light," Smith said without humor.

  "It was very very bright. But we didn't look directly into it."

  "But you say it frightened those who did?"

  "Scared the living beans out of them," said Remo.

  "Now, this pink light. Describe it."

  "Pink. Nice. Pleasant."

  "Bright pink?"

  "Happy pink," said Remo.

  "Very happy pink," said Chiun.

  "The happiest," added Remo in a happy voice.

  "But it was intense?" Smith prompted.

  "I wouldn't call it hot pink, although it sure wasn't cool."

  "Where did the pink light come from?"

  "The mouse's ears. Didn't I mention that?"

  "What mouse's ears?"

  "You know how a hot-air balloon supports a wicker basket?"

  "Yes."

  "The cars were fixed to the baskets. Fours sides, four ears. When the balloons showed up, they started to glow."

  "The basket or the ears?" asked Smith.

  "The ears. Then everything turned pink."

  "And nice," added Chiun.

  "I see," said Smith. After a pause he asked, "Was there anything else unusual?"

  "Except for the mini-Civil War?"

  "Yes, except for that."

  "I don't think so."

  "Tell Smith about the French woman," prompted Chiun.

  "Oh, yeah. There was the French woman."

  "Yes, you mentioned her before."

  "After the press trucks charged in, she showed up again, trying to figure out what was going on."

  "Did she?"

  "She was talking into a cellular phone or something. What was it she told the party on the other end, Little Father?"

  " 'La charade se perpetre-' "

  "No, I mean in English."

  " 'This charade is perpetrated by bright colored lights. Bright colored lights are the key.'"

  "You hear that, Smith? She said bright colored lights are the key."

  "Did you detain or question her?"

  "No. Why?"

  "Because she obviously knew something about the phenomenon at work on the battlefield!" Smith said testily.

  There was a pause on the line.

  "Smitty," Remo said in an abashed voice. "No need to shout, you know."

  "Sorry," said Smith, making a fist of frustration with his free hand. "Go on."

  "That was it. She took off."

  "And Mickey Weisinger?"

  "Carried off on the shoulders of a unified and grateful nation," Remo said happily. "Don't you love a happy ending?"

  "This has just begun," Smith said bitterly.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Whatever phenomenon affected those men on the battlefield obviously also affected Chiun and yourself."

  "Nothing affected us," Remo retorted. "In fact, we feel great."

  "You were supposed to stop the fighting."

  "Someone beat us to it."

  "And seize a Beasley executive and interrogate him about the whereabouts of Uncle Sam Beasley."

  The distant sound of snapping fingers came over the wire. "Oh, right," said Remo. "Damn. We forgot."

  "We will not forget again, Emperor," Chiun called out.

  "Scout's honor," said Remo, a trace of worry in his voice.

  "Can you find that woman again?" Smith asked.

  "Maybe."

  "Learn what she knows. Clearly she is not a newswoman."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "A hunch."

  "You don't have hunches. They require imagination."

  "I do this time," Harold Smith said grimly. "Report when you have something."

  Harold Smith hung up and turned his attention to his desk terminal. His fingers floated across the keyless keyboard, the letters flashing silently with each stroke of his age-gnarled fingers.

  The first reports of cessation of hostilities at Petersburg National Battlefield were coming across the wire. Smith tapped out the command that converted his terminal to color-TV reception.

  A network news anchor was looking abashed.

  "We still have no confirmation of what has taken place this Memorial Day in Petersburg, Virginia," he said as a graphic titled Civil War II? floated beside his head. He tapped his earphone. "What's that? We have national correspondent David O'Dull on the line. Go ahead, Dave."

  "Peter," a chirpy voice said, "we are having just a swell time here in historic Virginia on this glorious holiday afternoon."

  "That's wonderful, but tell us about these reports of a major battle."

  "All done," Dave chirp.

  "What exactly do you mean by 'all done'?"

  "It's a wrap. The Beasley people dropped by, made nice and everything's hunky-dory again."

  "Dave, you'll excuse me, but we're not getting many facts from you. Are you all right?"

  "Wait a sec. They're breaking out the camp coffee and flap-doodle, and newspeople are invited. Hey, call you back. Ciao. "

  "Dave? Dave!"

  Watching the network anchor grind his teeth in frustration before millions of Americans, Harold W. Smith muttered to himself, "The force has affected the electronic press, as well. But what is it?"

  Harold Smith had not long to puzzle over the matter because a red light flashed in one corner of his screen, indicating that the Folcroft basement mainframes, which continually trolled the net in search of mission-related data or news events, had captured something of importance.

  Smith tapped a hot-key. And on-screen appeared a capsulized digest of a story just moving on the wire.

  BULLETIN REUTERS PARIS, FRANCE. FRENCH AIR ARMY WARPLANES OPERATING OUT OF TAVERNY AIR BASE FLEW SORTIES AGAINST EURO BEASLEY THEME PARK. PARK SUSTAINED SEVERE DAMAGE. ALL PLANES AND PIL0TS RETURNED SAFELY TO BASE.

  "Oh, my God," croaked Harold W Smith from his Spartan office overlooking Long Island Sound. "What does it all mean?" It meant that the Second American Civil War was over, and the Franco-American Conflict of 1995 had just begun.

  Chapter 13

  History duly recorded the Second American Civil War and the Franco-American C
onflict of 1995 as two entirely separate and unrelated conflicts.

  History was wrong. The Second American Civil War ended at exactly 12:22 Eastern Daylight Time, while the opening engagement of the FrancoAmerican Conflict was logged at precisely 5:47 Greenwich Mean Time, less than thirty minutes later.

  Because they were to be forever believed separate and unrelated conflicts, historians never suspected that a satellite phone call placed from Petersburg National Battlefield in Virginia triggered the bombing of Euro Beasley.

  The call was placed by a secret agent code-named Arlequin to her case officer at the Paris HQ of the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, on Boulevard Mortier.

  The station chief brought the cryptic report to the head of the DGSE, France's primary espionage service.

  " 'Bright colored lights are the key,'" repeated Remy Renard, director of the DGSE.

  "That is what the agent said."

  "You have no other report?"

  "None."

  "Thank you, you are excused," said Renard.

  After the case officer left, Renard steepled his long fingers and frowned deeply. Here was a conundrum. A possibly important fragment of intelligence had come across his desk, and he had two immediate choices: file and forget it or communicate this data to a higher authority.

  After a moment's thought his duty appeared with a crystaline clarity. He would not file it. But even that simple choice led inevitably to another conundrum: to which higher authority did he report?

  It was the director of the DGSE's duty to report directly to the president of France on matters of national security.

  The question stood before him like an uninvited visitor. Was this mere national security or did it impact upon a greater concern? Namely the honor of France herself?

  It was difficult, this conundrum, and so DGSE Director Remy Renard leaned back in his seat, closed his deceptively sleepy-looking eyes and meditated at length.

  During that quiet meditation the minutes ticked by, and with it dissolved the immediate historical linkage between the new American Civil War and the Franco-American Conflict of 1995.

  Finally he reached for his telephone.

  WHEN HIS TELEPHONE RANG, French Minister of Culture Maurice Tourette answered it personally. He always answered his telephone personally. It was the culture minister's wish to receive all communications from his beloved citizens directly and free from interpretation. For the minister of culture fervently believed that the citizens of France were his citizens.

  In other nations the title "minister of culture" was a bland euphemism for espionage chief or a mere honorific. Not in France. And least not after Maurice Tourette acquired the singular honor.