"I suspected as much. You are on top of the Nebraska collision, I take it?"
"That was last hour's wreck," Remo said dryly. "We're at the MX railcar disaster now."
Smith frowned. "Do you mean CSX?"
"No. MX-as in rail-launched Intercontinental Ballistic Missile."
"Remo," Smith said patiently, "the MX program was voluntarily abandoned by the Air Force more than three years ago for budgetary reasons."
"Surprise. The Air Force has been playing a little shell game with Congress. They've been running an MX train through corn country all this time."
"I will put a stop to that," Smith said, his voice turning steely.
"Save your dime. The program was just scrubbed. They lost their missile, and the train is kinda banged up."
Smith's voice became urgent. "Remo, begin at the beginning."
Remo explained what he'd discovered at the California Zephyr crash site, up to and including the beheaded rotaryplow engineer.
"The ronin again!" Smith gasped.
"Yep. We didn't see him at the crash, but he was all over the MX train. There are a lot of U.S. airmen without heads, and one MX missile in the corn. Good thing it was a dummy."
Smith swallowed his horror. "You saw this ronin?"
"Saw him, chased him, lost him in the corn. Sorry."
"Why would a ronin attack the US. rail system?"
"Maybe he knew about the MX train and was trying to nail every train he could until he found it."
"That theory is farfetched."
"Maybe you'd like Chiun's theory better."
"Put him on."
"I'd better tell it," said Remo. "Chiun thinks this guy is the same one who had a run-in with an old Master centuries ago and is only now catching up with the House."
"Preposterous!" Smith exploded.
"Chiun, Smitty says your idea is preposterous: Unquote."
Harold Smith heard the Master of Sinanju say something pungent in the Korean language.
"What did he say?"
"You don't want to know, Smitty. Look, he may not be a ghost but he sure as hell acted like one. He popped out of a boxcar like an amok hologram. We couldn't lay hands on him. He was there but wasn't, if you know what I mean."
"How did he get away?"
"We followed him. He got tired of that and threw his katana at me. That was the weirdest part, Smitty. On the way it suddenly turned solid. I kept my head only because I ducked."
"You kept your fool head because I arrested the deadly blade!" snapped Chiun.
"Take your pick, Smitty," Remo said wearily.
"You have the katana still?"
"Yeah. Want it for your collection?"
"Yes. And I want you both here."
"Gotcha. We're on the next flight."
Hanging up, Remo looked down at Chiun's unhappy face. "You heard?"
"Every word. You explained my side of the story improperly. It is fortunate that Smith has recalled us, so that I may rectify your many errors."
"Don't forget to tell Smitty which assassin lost the ronin in the corn."
Chiun made a sound like a steam valve hissing.
FIVE HOURS LATER, Remo and Chiun stood in Harold Smith's Folcroft office once more. The second captured katana lay on the desk beside the first. Smith was examining the workmanship of the new blade.
"It is identical to the first," he said.
"Big deal," said Remo. "See one katana, you've seen them all."
"You have located no blade-smith, Smith?" asked Chiun.
Smith shook his gray head. "No such blades are being forged in this country."
"For a ghost," Remo said, eyeing Chiun, "this guy sure has a ready supply of cutlery."
Chiun frowned. "He is a ghost. You cannot deny that, Remo."
"He was ghostly. That much I'll go along with."
"A ghost is a ghost."
"Ghosts don't go around derailing trains as part of their earthly penances. Especially ronin."
"What logic is this?" spit Chiun.
"He's Japanese, right?"
"A Nihonjinwa," spit Chiun. "A stupid Japanese."
"So why is he wrecking US. trains? Shouldn't he be wrecking his own?"
"You call that logic?"
"Yeah, I call that logic. If he were after the House, he wouldn't be in the derailing business. He would be in the beheading business."
"He is in both!" Chiun flared.
"He's more interested in derailing than beheading."
A phone started ringing. It wasn't the blue contact phone nor the Rolm phone Smith used for Folcroft business. The ring was muffled.
Reaching down, Smith drew open a desk drawer and took up a fire-engine red telephone receiver.
"Yes, Mr. President?"
Smith listened. So did Remo and Chiun.
"Yes, Mr. President. But you understand as Chief Executive you are not empowered to order CURE into action. You can only suggest missions."
Smith listened to the President of the United States.
"I will consider the matter," said Smith. "Thank you for the call." And he hung up.
"That was the President," Smith said, closing the drawer.
"Do tell," said Remo.
"He wants the organization to look into these derailments."
"So you told him no?"
"No. I told him that I would consider it. There is no point in alarming him with our recent findings at this juncture."
"I'd say all the dead bodies, not to mention the near-nuclear catastrophe over the last day or two, is worth an alarm or two."
"This President would be ordering us into action at the drop of a hat if encouraged to think of CURE as an instrument of executive-branch power," said Smith. His eyes went to the new katana.
"Be careful," said Remo. "It's got a button on it like the other one. We avoided touching it."
Smith nodded. Removing a Waterman pen from his vest pocket, he tapped the handle. It sounded solid. Carefully he laid the blunt end of the pen to the button and pressed it.
The button made a distinct click.
And the blade sank into the black glass of his desktop as if slipping into a pool of still black water.
Aghast, Smith recoiled.
"Did you see that!" Remo exploded.
Everyone got down on the floor and tried to see under the desk. They saw nothing at first. Then the blade reappeared.
Like a falling feather, it floated through the kick space, touched the floor and promptly sank into the varnished pine planking.
"What's under this floor?" Remo asked.
Smith croaked, "The laundry room."
"Have it evacuated," Remo said, racing for the door, Chuin, a flapping silvery silk wraith, at his heels.
Smith grabbed the telephone.
BY THE TIME they reached the laundry room, the door was hanging open, and two workers in starched whites were outside, looking rattled.
"You see a floating sword by any chance?" Remo demanded.
"You tell us. Did we?"
"Not if you value your jobs," said Remo, going in.
Inside they looked up at the ceiling. It was unbroken. But that was to be expected. They looked down at the floor. No sign of any blade. There was nothing in the big industrial-size washing machines except hospital laundry.
"The basement!" said Chiun.
Exiting, they warned the laundry-room staff to stay out of the room until told otherwise. They looked more than happy to comply.
They bumped into Harold Smith as he stepped out of the elevator.
"We think it's in the basement," said Remo. Smith nodded.
They took the stairs. At the foot of the creaky wood-plank steps, Smith flicked on the lights.
He didn't get much in the way of illumination.
"You know, you might have sprung for light bulbs brighter than twenty-five watts," Remo said.
"This is not a work area," said Smith.
They searched the basement and found nothing.
"It has dropped into the very earth itself," Chiun intoned. "Never to be seen again."
"What's directly under the laundry room?" Remo asked Smith.
Smith blinked up at the pipework radiating from the big boilers and furnaces that supplied Folcroft with heat and steam. He seemed to be reading them like a map.
"The computers!" Smith gasped. Hastily he took a key ring from his vest and strode to a concrete wall broken by a wooden door.
Unlocking the door, he opened it. A steady industrial humming became audible. Reaching in, Smith tugged at a drop cord, and a dangling naked light bulb came on-another twenty-five-watter.
They entered.
The room was a small space crammed with mainframe computers and short jukeboxlike optical WORM drive slave units. They were the source of the low humming-and the heart of CURE's information-gathering network.
In the center of the floor, looking as solid as the concrete on which it lay, sat the katana blade.
Gingerly they surrounded it.
"Looks solid to me," Remo said.
"Looks can be deceiving," Chiun warned.
Smith bent down and touched it. Feeling substance, he picked it up.
"Solid one minute and then the next not," he murmured.
Remo nodded. "Just like in Nebraska."
"Pressing the button caused it to dematerialize," said Smith.
"What caused it to undematerialize?" asked Remo.
"Sorcery," said Chiun.
"There is a logical, scientific explanation for this phenomenon," Smith insisted, "and I intend to discover it."
BACK IN SMITH'S OFFICE, the two katana swords lay on the black-glass-topped desk.
"Matter obeys fixed laws," said Smith.
"Sorcery obeys others," suggested Chiun.
He was ignored.
Leaving the second katana blade, Smith picked up the first. He pressed the button. Nothing happened.
"A button suggests what, Remo?"
"Turning something on or off, I guess."
"And that suggests. . ."
"Electricity."
"Exactly." Smith held up the end of the hilt, examining it carefully. He squeezed. He pushed. He pulled. But he obtained no result.
"You're not looking for batteries, are you?" asked Remo.
Chiun said, "The white mind is like a runaway train. It always follows the same track. Emperor, this is beyond your plodding white science. Do not attempt to fathom what you cannot comprehend."
"Let me try;" suggested Remo.
Smith handed over the katana.
Remo looked over the blade hilt.
"Feels pretty solid to me," said Remo, hefting it.
Chiun bustled up, saying, "Therefore, it is not."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"That I am correct and you are not."
"Who lost the ronin in the cornfield?"
And while they were arguing, Remo squeezed the hilt and the end popped open like a flashlight.
Instinct caused Remo to release the hilt. Both he and Chiun flew to opposite sides of the room before the blade struck the floor. It bounced, and out from the open hilt spilled a train of short yellow cylinders.
Smith was coming around from behind his desk as Remo and Chiun approached the fallen blade with caution.
Smith picked up one of the cylinders. "A battery," he said.
"What make?"
Smith blinked. "I cannot read it."
Chiun took it from Smith hands. "Japanese! I was right! Look, Smith, it is Japanese."
"What is the brand name?"
"Who cares? It is Japanese. That is all that matters."
"I would like to know the brand name, please."
Chiun read the label.
"Gomi."
Returning to his desk, Smith got his computer up and running.
"What are you doing?"
"Researching the Gomi brand name."
"What good will that do?" asked Remo.
"The power required to enable that blade to defy scientific law is not likely to be something one purchases off the shelf. These batteries are specially made."
"For katanas?"
Smith nodded. "For katanas."
A minute later Smith said, "Gomi is the industrial brand name for Gomi products, and the brands Gomi and Hideo are connected to Nishitsu."
"Hideo was the name of the dozing yellow bull of Mystic," Chiun crowed.
"He means the bulldozer that was parked on the tracks at Mystic," explained Remo.
"Remo," Smith said slowly. "Has it occurred to you that everything we have seen so far can be explained by the technology we know to have been pioneered by the Nishitsu Industrial Electrical Corporation?"
"Yeah, it has. But this guy isn't the Krahseevah."
"Do not speak that hateful name," said Chiun.
"We have twice before dealt with a foreign spy who was sent to this country to pilfer industrial and military secrets."
"Tell me about it. But that was a Russian kleptomaniac, tricked out in an electronic suit that gave him the power to walk through walls. He was a thief, but he never hurt anyone. Besides, he's dead as far as we know."
"What we know is very little. But the electronic garment he wore was designed by Nishitsu Osaka. And if they built one, they could duplicate it."
"The only time the Nishitsu name has come up in this was when the Southern Pacific train hit a Nishitsu Ninja," Remo pointed out.
Chiun smiled broadly. "It all now makes supreme sense."
"It does?" Remo and Smith said together.
"Yes. Emperor, your rails are under attack by the scheming Japanese. It is obviously part of a plot to humble your mighty nation."
Remo looked at Chiun with a vague, incredulous expression. "What happened to the finger-flicking ghost ronin?" he blurted.
Chiun composed his face into bland lines. "Do not be absurd, Remo. Whoever heard of a ghost whose sword required batteries?"
"I'll let that pass because I like clinging to my sanity. So answer me this-how does wrecking our railroads bring the U.S. to its knees?" Remo wanted to know.
"That is so obvious I will not deign to answer it," Chiun sniffed, presenting his back to Remo.
Remo and Smith exchanged glances.
"Actually it's as good a theory as we have right now," Remo admitted.
Chiun beamed. They were learning wisdom. It was almost enough to take his mind off his missing fingernail.
Smith was opening the first katana when his computer beeped.
He went to it. Remo came around when he saw the color of Smith's face go from light gray to ghost white.
"Another derailment?"
"Yes. A Conrail freight and an Amtrak passenger train. In Maryland."
"Anyone hurt?"
"Unknown at this time. Strange. This is very strange."
"What's strange?"
"This accident has happened before. Exactly this way." Smith swallowed. "And it was one of the worst in Amtrak history."
Chapter 21
Cora Lee Beall would never forget the sound as long as she lived.
That long scream of metal that preceded the dull crump of impact, followed by the booming cannonade of passenger coaches slamming into a suddenly stopped engine. Then an awful silence.
And after the silence, the horrible moans and screams of the injured rose up from the settling dust like fresh-made ghosts discovering their fates.
It had happened at her backyard right here in Essex, Maryland.
Cora Lee had been unloading her washing machine. The sound yanked her out of that household chore like a bluefin tuna pulled out of the Chesapeake Bay.
When she emerged from her house, she saw the coaches lying on their sides, piled and jammed together like foolish toys in her backyard. Big as they were, they reminded her of little toys.
One had skidded on its side, scalping the lawn and crushing her clothesline flat. The same clothesline she would have been standing at in another minute or tw
o. Another coach lay open, as if an old-fashioned claw can opener had been taken to it, spilling its precious cargo.
It was a day and an experience Cora Lee would never forget and hoped never to witness again. The sound was what stayed with her. Not so much the blood and the torn of limb. After things got back to normal, in the first of the nights without sleep, Cora Lee heard those sounds again and again in her mind and ultimately came to the sorrowful conclusion they had cut her life exactly in half. After that first long, piercing scream of steel wheels on steel rail, her life was never again the same.
That was back in January 1987. Almost ten long years ago now. How the time had flown. Gradually the gouged earth softened, and the scars were healed over by the seasonal rains. New grass grew. Cora Lee got herself a brand-new washer-dryer stack, never again to air out her laundry in the backwash of the Colonial. She finally got to the point where she could look at the passing trains and not flinch.
True normalcy never did quite come back into her life, but the years took care of the worst of it.
So on a July day when Cora Lee was lounging on a redwood chair as the day's wash tumbled in the dryer, sipping a mint Julep and looking out over the rail bed, the last thing she expected on earth was to hear a long, familiar scream of steel under stress.
Cora Lee dropped her drink and sat frozen. Before, she had only heard the disaster. This time she saw it happen with her own eyes.
The Colonial came shrieking by, steel wheels spitting sparks. She knew what a hotbox was. When a moving wheel-set overheated, it would spark and begin to fly apart. This was no hotbox. Every wheel was in agony. The Colonial looked more like a groundskimming comet than a train. The wheels were locked, sliding not rolling. She knew enough about trains to know the air brakes had been applied. Hard and fast.
Her stricken gaze went to the engine, and her heart jumped and froze even as her body sat paralyzed.
Coming down the line on the same northbound track was a lone blue Conrail freight engine.
"This can't be happening," she said. Then she screamed it.
"This can't be happening. Oh, dear Lord!"
But it was. Exactly like 1987, when the Colonial slammed into a Conrail engine that shouldn't have been there, and sixteen had died.
The sounds that followed might have been played by the tape recorder of her memory and pumped out through a quadrophonic sound system.
The long scream of steel ended in a dull, ugly crump. Then like steel thunder the coaches slammed together and flung themselves about.
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