The Last Monarch td-120

by Warren Murphy

  He saw only a blurry jumble of disguised kidnappers and the ex-President limp in their arms. "There's nothing to see," the Secret Service agent insisted. Face a sour mask, he turned back to the man who claimed to be an undersecretary of the Treasury.

  He was stunned to discover the guy who had dragged him down here was gone. So was the old Asian.

  The door to the security room was closed tightly. It was as if they were never there.

  With deliberate slowness, Agent Blizard turned back to the other two men. They were glancing around the room, surprise and relief visible on their faces.

  "We better get somebody after them," the FBI man said, clearly not thrilled with the prospect of crossing Chiun. He reached for the phone.

  A hand quickly pressed on the receiver, holding it firmly in the cradle.

  "Whoa," Agent Blizard said, his voice soft. His hand never left the phone. "I think we should keep this one quiet."

  A puzzled expression formed on the FBI man's face as Blizard dragged his own gaze back to the surveillance video.

  On the monitor, the scene remained unchanged. Agent Blizard had a gut feeling that these guys were on the level. But no matter who they were, they were wrong. The image on that tape hadn't changed one iota since Blizard had first laid eyes on it that morning.

  "Shut it off," the Secret Service agent commanded, a note of fresh revulsion in his voice. Possessed as he was of normal human eyesight, Agent John Blizard could not have hoped to see what Remo and Chiun had noted pinned to the shirt of the man who held the ex-President.

  When the tape was shut off, the grainy white insignia depiction of a snow-white dove with wings wrapped around a lone fir tree disappeared from the monitor, and was gone.

  Chapter 12

  Remo and Chiun swept back out the gleaming front doors of the prestigious hospital, sliding easily into the throng of patiently waiting reporters.

  "Why didn't you wait for me back there?" Remo complained as they glided through the thick cluster of cameras, lights and reporters.

  "Forgive me, Remo," Chiun replied dryly. "I was not aware that it was my duty to be tethered at inconvenient moments like some mangy canine."

  "It's your own fault," Remo said. "Where did you put the Treasury ID Smith gave you?"

  "The dog ate it," Chiun said blandly.

  "Can we can the fido motif?" Remo said. "And if you're going to blow up, I wish you'd hurry up and get it over with, for crying out loud."

  "Blow up?" Chiun queried. "Whatever do you mean?" The Master of Sinanju's wrinkled face was chillingly serene.

  "That. That's the sort of thing that scares me," Remo insisted, pointing to the old Asian's tranquil expression. "You're a ticking time bomb just waiting to blow, and I'm sick of cringing every time I think you're gonna go off."

  "I do not know why you persist in this," Chiun said.

  "Twenty years of mood swings is why," Remo muttered.

  Remo had been searching the crowd as he walked. He found whom he was looking for near the line of news vans.

  Stan Ronaldman had plastered his shiny black toupee back onto his scalp. The reporter was scrupulously checking his hair in the side-view mirror of his network truck when Remo and Chiun sidled up to him.

  "What whacko group uses a pigeon hugging a Christmas tree for its logo?" Remo demanded. Ronaldman jumped, cracking his forehead on the mirror. When he spun to face the voice, his eyes opened wide in horrified recognition.

  "You!" he gasped. His jet-black devil eyebrows formed frightened triangles alongside a freshly swelling forehead bump.

  "C'mon, c'mon," Remo encouraged, snapping his fingers angrily. "I don't have all day. What's the group?"

  "I'm calling the police," Ronaldman proclaimed. When he tried to bully past them, Remo reached out and plucked the toupee from the reporter's head. Ronaldman shrieked like a woman. Even while he threw the tail of his suit jacket over his shiny bald scalp, he was making desperate grabs for his wig. Remo held the clump of nylon hair at arm's length.

  "What group?" Remo repeated.

  "I don't know!" Ronaldman pleaded. "You said a pigeon?"

  "No," Chiun interjected. "It was a dove."

  "What's the difference?" Remo asked.

  "For some, the dove is a misguided symbol for peace. A pigeon merely symbolizes filth."

  "Hugging a Christmas tree?" Ronaidman's worried voice asked from beneath his jacket.

  "Yes," Remo said.

  "No," Chiun stated firmly. "It was a simple fir tree. There was no Druidic ornamentation."

  "That sounds like Earthpeace," the reporter volunteered.

  Remo snapped his fingers in sudden recognition. "That's it," he announced. "I knew it was from some nutbar group."

  "Oh, Earthpeace isn't nutty," Ronaldman insisted from the recesses of his jacket. "They're very concerned with issues dealing with the environment and disarmament."

  "And the people who dedicate their lives to either are never complete flakejobs," Remo said dryly. He dangled the reporter's toupee in front of the shadowy opening of his jacket. Far in the back of the Brooks Brothers cave, a pair of eager, bloodshot eyes opened wide.

  "Their address gets you back your Woolworth's tresses."

  Stan Ronaldman couldn't speak quickly enough. "San Francisco!" he said. "Somewhere near Golden Gate Park. I don't know where exactly. I could check. Hell, I'll drive."

  "Pass," Remo said, tossing the limp wig into the jacket hollow.

  By the sounds of the ensuing happy growl, Ronaldman had snagged his hairpiece in his sharp teeth. Coat still draped over his head, he spun and ran straight into the side of his news van.

  As Stan Ronaldman sprawled, unconscious on the ground, wig drooping from his mouth like a furry, distended tongue, Remo turned away.

  "Let's get a move on," he announced.

  "Should you not first call Smith?" Chiun asked.

  "Not this time," Remo replied, shaking his head. "He's worked himself up into too much of a lather already. I don't want to talk to him until we have something concrete."

  "Where you go, Remo Williams, I will follow," the Master of Sinanju proclaimed. "After all, I am agreeable." His dry lips curled to form a mummified smile.

  "Stop doing that," Remo groused.

  The two men walked away from the gathered reporters, who persisted in their death watch even though the man whose death they were so eager to report was no longer there.

  Chapter 13

  In the San Francisco headquarters of Earthpeace, located south of Golden Gate Park in a small office complex off Lincoln Way, Brad Mesosphere smiled the oily, superior smile he'd perfected as a PR flak for the world's most famous environmental organization.

  His five-pack-a-day cigarette habit had turned his once yellow teeth a dirt friendly brown.

  "My allies," he announced to the five Earthpeacers arranged around the grubby conference table, "I have just learned that phase one has been a complete success."

  The faces that looked back at him were eager. "They made it to South America?" one man asked, awed. His filthy clothes looked as if they'd been used to mop out the monkey house.

  "According to what I just heard, they're through the Panama Canal already and are heading into the Atlantic." Brad's grin broadened. "Tomorrow, the world as we know it will be changed permanently and irrevocably."

  There was a quaver of pride in his voice.

  It was a quaver well-earned. Man was about to be hoisted on his own petard. The blind worship of technology would be his undoing. And the deindustrialization cause would be advanced as never before.

  Brad was a man who lived his life for the Cause. He had even changed his surname from the hideous white Anglo-Saxon "Hayward" to the more enviroconscious "Mesosphere," in honor of the late great scientist-activist Dr. Sage Carlin. In one of his many groundless theories, Carlin had claimed that methane released from overbred beef cattle was depleting the mesospheric layer of Earth's atmosphere.

  In taking the name, Brad felt
as if he were honoring Sage Carlin's memory. Even though lately there were rumors that Carlin's death was greatly exaggerated, Brad thought that this was neither here nor there. The fact was, Carlin-dead or alive-had cared. Brad cared, too.

  He'd cared even when he'd worked at NASA as a legitimate scientist-the kind who seemed to diligently struggle at squandering all professional credibility on every half-baked, fly-by-night environmentalist scheme to come down the pike.

  In the seventies, Brad had screamed about the coming Ice Age. In the eighties, it was nuclear winter. The nineties brought fresh, frightened tantrums about global warming.

  That in the geologically insignificant span of twenty years he'd gone from claiming Earth would soon become a freezing ball of ice to a burning ashen cinder was perfectly acceptable in his job at NASA. Hell, most of the folks who worked there had made the same cold-to-hot journey with nary an eye blink from the higher-ups.

  His performance at his space-agency job had been without a single complaint. Until one fateful day just a few short years earlier.

  NASA had just landed a small probe on the surface of Mars. The pictures taken by the miniature robotic dune buggy had captivated the world.

  On a tour of mission control, Congresswoman Shirley Magruder-Jacklan was impressed by the images displayed on the large suspended screens. Dull eyes earnest, she turned to her guide, the soon-to-be-unemployed Brad Hayward.

  "This is amazing," Congresswoman MagruderJacklan said of the grainy pictures being broadcast from the red planet. Cameras flashed images of her for newspapers and magazines. Spools of videotape whirred for the nightly news.

  "Truly amazing," she repeated. When she turned to Brad, her face was deadly serious. "Now, can your little car thingie drive on over to where our brave astronauts planted our proud American flag?"

  It was the earnestness of her tone that did it. Although he was in political lockstep with everything the congresswoman stood for, her supreme ignorance in that single moment was too much for Brad to endure.

  Before he knew it, he laughed right in her face.

  He laughed and laughed and laughed some more, even as it was explained in hushed tones to the congresswoman that man had never set foot on Mars. He laughed as she was ushered hastily away, scowling back at her tour guide. He laughed until he cried, right up until the point he was fired.

  Only then did reality set in.

  As a former NASA scientist, Brad was employable in two fields: the environmental movement or the food-service industry. He chose the former.

  After a quick name change and a move to the West Coast, Brad found a new home at Earthpeace. And, as luck would have it, he was blessed to be a member of the movement during its greatest hour. The moment that would get them all written up in the history books. Assuming it was even possible to print history books after the following day.

  At the head of the Earthpeace conference table, Brad could barely wrangle in his idiot's grin.

  "No longer will Homo sapiens rape Mother Earth for sport," he proclaimed grandly. "We're on the cusp of a great new age. Thanks to us, mankind will finally be made to understand his true place in the natural order."

  Although use of the masculine was universally frowned on within the Earthpeace organization, Brad's usage here was clearly acceptable. When talking about the destruction wrought on the poor, pitiful, defenseless little blue planet, male pronouns were not just encouraged-they were mandatory.

  "Nothing in the press yet?" a grossly overweight woman in a paisley dress asked, her rapid-fire voice quivering. She'd been a pop diva twenty years and two hundred pounds ago. As her weight rose, her career had fallen. Over the past two decades, she'd been forced to resort to gimmicky big-band and Spanish-language albums.

  A nine-by-thirteen-inch cardboard tray filled with greasy French fries sat on the conference table before her. As she listened to Brad, the singer continuously stuffed fries into her bloated face.

  "Not yet," he admitted. "The media's still treating it like the old fascist is in the hospital."

  "Shouldn't we call them and tell them?" one of the men asked.

  "Absolutely not," Brad stated firmly. "Anyway, he's only window dressing. The real cargo is too important to let them know about our involvement just yet. We can't risk them intercepting the Grappler before it reaches its destination."

  The pop singer belched loudly. A hail of half-eaten fries splattered the table. She swept them up with greedy, fat fingers, stuffing them back in her maw.

  "So what do we do now?" one of the men asked, one eye on the pop singer. She was sucking halfchewed fried potato from her chubby fingertips.

  "Nothing we can do now but wait," Brad replied, shaking his head. "Except-" he threw his hands out wide, a grand expression on his beaming face-

  "-this is a cause for celebration!" he yelled. "Fruitopias all around!"

  And as a cheer rose up from the gathered Earthpeacers, a jubilant Brad Mesosphere marched to the minifridge that chugged away in the corner. Freon-free, of course.

  INCENSE BURNED in smoldering tin dishes that resembled battered bedpans. Potpourri smells wafted from genuine Native American and Mexican clay pottery that looked to have been made with diligence by an ungifted preschooler.

  The desks and chairs within the office had been recycled from the nearest landfill. To conserve water, they hadn't been rinsed off. The scent of coffee grounds, slimy banana peels and rotten eggshells filled the air.

  Remo's nose was bombarded with competing noxious aromas the instant he stepped through the front door of Earthpeace's San Francisco headquarters.

  "Pee-yew," he griped. "What the hell died in here?"

  Behind him, the Master of Sinanju's face puckered in intense displeasure.

  "It stinks of rotting garbage," the old Korean complained. The air seemed to have curdled his button nose. He pressed one broad kimono sleeve over his face. The other, he fanned frantically before him.

  "I've smelled better garbage," Remo disagreed. "Let's get this over with before our noses drop off." They kept their breathing shallow as they stepped over to the reception area.

  Behind a filthy desk, a middle-aged woman with a bandanna tied around her hair sat reading a copy of Mother Jones, a pair of tinted granny glasses perched on the end of her nose.

  She lowered her magazine as they approached, a perpetual scowl on her blotchy face.

  "Can I help you?" she asked.

  "Not unless you've got a can of Lysol stashed up your caftan," Remo said. "Just get me your boss."

  The woman instantly frowned at the term. "There is no boss here," she said frostily. "We're a collective. Everything is voted on and done for the good of all."

  "Vote yourself a bath," Remo suggested. "Look, somebody's in charge here. Get him."

  "I feel ill," Chiun's muffled voice announced through his kimono sleeve. He started to lean against the woman's filthy desk for support but at the last minute thought better of it. He opted for swooning in place.

  The receptionist ignored Chiun. Her dagger eyes glared malevolence at Remo. "Why do you automatically assume a man is in command?" she asked, bristling.

  Remo rolled his eyes. "Lady, I don't care. Him, her, it, you. I don't care. Just get them. This place reeks like sweaty hockey equipment."

  Her severe frown lines deepened. A long, dirty fingernail unfurled. "Take a seat," she commanded. Remo looked at the nearest chair. Some unidentifiable viscous goo dripped down the plastic back. "I wouldn't sit on that with your ass," he said. Her face was stuffed back into her magazine. "Sit, stand, hop on one foot. It doesn't matter to me."

  "How about if I kick?" Remo suggested. Before she could protest, he skirted the desk. There was a closed door beyond. He brought the heel of his loafer into the warped wooden surface. The door exploded from its frame, skittering in thick fragments into the hallway beyond.

  Behind him, the woman leaped to her feet, chair toppling backward onto the floor.

  "What are you doing?" she shrieke
d.

  "Giving someone an excuse to kill another tree," Remo offered.

  It was a split second before she realized what he meant. Only when he took his first step through the shattered remnants of the door-the door that would now have to be replaced-did the truth dawn.

  "You're one of them!" the woman screeched behind him.

  "If by 'them' you mean people who've figured out that Right Guard works on both sides, guilty as charged," Remo called over his shoulder.

  She wasn't listening. As he and the Master of Sinanju slipped into the corridor, she was wrenching open her desk drawer. Remo could hear her fumbling frantically even as his finely tuned senses honed in on the cluster of six heartbeats dead ahead.

  The smell wasn't as bad in here. An open window carried fresh air into the corridor.

  "You want to do the honors?" Remo offered, pausing before the closed conference-room door.

  "Just be quick about it," Chiun urged, his face still firmly planted in his sleeve of brocade silk. Remo nodded sharply.

  The inner door surrendered to his kicking heel. When the two Masters of Sinanju breezed inside, they were greeted by half a dozen shocked faces.

  The room was a continuation of the squalid decor of the lobby. Colorful posters thumbtacked to the pressboard walls expressed such sentiments as Have You Hugged A Seal Today? and No Nukes Is Good Nukes.

  At the appearance of the intruders, Brad Mesosphere's Fruitopia bottle slipped from his fingers. It cracked, spraying its contents across the grimy linoleum floor.

  "Oh, my God," he gasped, his voice tremulous with soft disbelief. "They're here."

  "The dirt mother in the lobby had the same reaction," Remo mused. "Looks like we were expected."

  Brad blinked at his words, a hint of terrified realization in them.

  "What do you want?" he chirped, frightened.

  "My ability to smell back," Remo said. "But thanks to the cavalcade of stench out there, that seems out of the question right about now, so I'll settle for the President." His eyes got suddenly very cold. "Where is he?" he demanded.