Waste Not, Want Not td-130

by Warren Murphy

  The man who was thought to be a janitor, but who had been the real mind behind the Vaporizer, hastily stuffed a few items in a knapsack. A few floppy disks, some schematics. He had already destroyed his hard drives. All of the data he had stolen. He could use it to re-create his work here. Or adapt it in other ways the world would not expect.

  This last thought flitted through his racing mind even as his hand brushed across an item on his workbench.

  It looked like a soldering gun with a miniature satellite dish attached to the end. He picked it up to put it in its special case when a voice from behind startled him.

  "You stupid fool. You stupid, stupid fool."

  The woman's voice was flat with cold contempt. Keeping his back to her, he looked up only with his eyes. He saw her reflection on the screen of his dead monitor. The beautiful woman with the blond hair was framed in the open doorway of the shed. In her hand was some sort of pistol. She had it aimed at his back.

  "Did you even care what might happen?" she asked. She spoke in his native language. "I read the data. Shifting atoms like this is dangerous on a small level. An accident where a single atom materializes inside another could cause a nuclear explosion. With what you have been doing here, we are lucky all of South America wasn't blown into orbit. Or worse. You knew this, yet you did not care."

  His hand still rested on the strange-looking gun on his desk, shielded by his body. Unseen by his guest, he lifted it, a smile brushing his pale features.

  "I was paid handsomely for my skills," he admitted. "But I was not paid to care." And he whirled.

  He squeezed the trigger once. But only once. He had fired wide. Anna Chutesov did not. Anna's bullet caught the janitor square in the chest. With a shocked look on his face, he spun on one heel. He died sprawled across his workbench. Still scowling, Anna crossed to check the man's pulse. Satisfied that he was dead, she holstered her weapon. When she heard scuffling feet behind her, she glanced up.

  "Director Chutesov!" Petrovina Bulganin exclaimed from the door. She noted the janitor's body. "Is that him?"

  Anna nodded. "I came just as this confusion began," she said, aiming her chin to the bedlam out in the parking lot. "They were all more interested in spiriting their charges to safety. No one saw me come here."

  She began collecting the janitor's things. She would destroy everything the first chance she got. "Those men are here," Petrovina said. "The ones who know about your amnesia. They both seem to know you."

  "Your phone?" Anna asked as she hurriedly worked.

  "The old one still has it as far as I know."

  "Good." The last thing Anna picked up was the strange gun the janitor had used against her. With careful blue eyes she followed the path the fired weapon had taken.

  A hole as big around as a coffee mug was visible in the door frame. There was no splintering of wood. No bullet had been fired. Beyond, in the same path of the fired weapon, a similar hole had been bored through the trunk of a tree.

  Anna's eyes narrowed as she studied the strange phenomenon. "I was never here," Anna Chutesov announced.

  Tucking the gun into its box and tucking the box up under her arm, Anna hustled past Agent Petrovina Bulganin. And was lost in the growing confusion.

  Chapter 32

  They drove a government Jeep up into the hills. Mike Sears was behind the wheel, a bloody bandage wrapped around his injured head. Remo sat beside him. Chiun and Petrovina sat in the back. When the guards at the booth saw Sears, they obediently opened the gates to the special road above the Vaporizer.

  It was nearly a two-hour drive, from paved road to treacherous dirt path. All along the side of the road, even in dense jungle, ran telephone poles. Black lines of cables stretched up from far below, sometimes hidden by the jungle canopy, sometimes breaking out into stark sunlight.

  "What happened to the people who put up the poles?" Remo asked Sears as they drove.

  The scientist looked sickly. "I don't know," he admitted. "When they were done, they just sort of vanished. Maybe they work for a utility company in town?" His look of hope faded when he saw Remo's hard expression.

  The ravine between the mountains brought them to a vast valley. Sears stopped the Jeep on a plateau above.

  A sea of rotting garbage stretched out before them-every scrap of trash that had been processed through the Vaporizer from the first moment it had been switched on.

  In the back seat, Petrovina turned to the scientist. "It was all hoax," she accused.

  Sears nodded. There was shame on his face. "It would have taken years to fill this valley. We had plenty of room. I always figured it would be found out sooner or later, but by then everyone would be in the habit of sending their trash here and wouldn't stop. I mean, it didn't matter where it ended up as long as someone was willing to take it, right? But I guess that wasn't the plan at all." He still seemed shell-shocked from the events below. "See, the Vaporizer doesn't disintegrate trash, it just sort of moves it."

  The telephone poles fanned out in either direction, forming a semicircle around the near end of the valley, connected by cables. At the top of each pole a black box that looked like a miniature outdoor speaker was directed down into the valley.

  "The demolecularized trash we sent up from the Vaporizer traveled the cable and was redirected back out through those," Sears explained. As the four of them climbed out of the Jeep, he pointed up at the boxes on the poles.

  In the distance some trash had materialized on trees, bending them low. In most places it had obliterated the local flora. The valley floor was a growing mountain of trash. Seagulls flew above while rats played on the piles.

  "Your great work," Remo said acidly.

  "I didn't invent it," Sears said defensively as he looked down on the valley. "They brought the technology to me. They needed a public face to keep the secret. I learned enough to keep it running, but I didn't come up with it."

  "Yes, your secret," Petrovina spat. "That you did all this with technology stolen from Russia." Remo had kept quiet on the subject for the ride up. He shook his head firmly.

  "Only after Russia stole it from Japan," he insisted.

  He spoke with utter certainty. Both Sears and Petrovina saw the confident cast of his face. As he looked out across the valley, Chiun nodded agreement.

  "What are you talking about?" Petrovina demanded.

  "Russia doesn't do complex, Petrovina," Remo explained. "Russia does clumsy. Tanks and trucks and missiles that rattle apart as soon as they're driven off the showroom floor. Russia can't build a toaster small enough to fit in your garage. If they can't build it with hammers, they can't build it. This was the Japanese. If you want specifics, it was the Nishitsu Corporation that came up with all this."

  Both Sears and Petrovina knew the company well. Nishitsu was huge. Like most people in the West, they each owned several Nishitsu appliances.

  "How do you know?" Petrovina asked skeptically.

  "Because we've had experience with this stuff," Remo replied.

  And he told them about a man both Remo and Chiun had encountered before. A man who wore a suit that could compress atoms and redirect them through telephone lines. The suit had been developed in Japan by Nishitsu and stolen by the Russians. Twice Remo and Chiun had gone up against a Russian in the suit. One time they had met a Japanese who worked for the corporation that had developed it.

  Petrovina remained skeptical, but Mike Sears was nodding with growing enthusiasm.

  "The suit," he said excitedly, eyes wide with interest. "You actually saw it? I mean, you saw it work?"

  "It was a thing of evil," Chiun said coldly. He made a point of tucking his long fingernails deep inside the sleeves of his kimono.

  "Wow," Sears said. "I never saw it myself. It was in the specs he brought. There were schematics and everything. We were able to reverse-engineer the technology from the data he stole and adapt it to the Vaporizer."

  "You are saying this is true?" Petrovina asked.

  "It's basic
ally the same thing," Sears said, nodding. "Only on a much bigger scale. We were redirecting a lot more matter than is present in a single human being. No sweat, because the fiber-optic lines gave us much more capacity than even we needed. The only real problem was that the suit was built to protect the wearer. It reconstructed on the far end after transport because the matter was contained. Our open version couldn't reconstruct like that. Not a problem for inanimate matter, but for organic material..."

  His voice trailed off. He had seen the look on Remo's face.

  Remo was peering down into the valley, his expression dark with disgust. Wordlessly he left the others, taking off down the hill.

  "Where are you going?" Petrovina asked. She started after him, but Chiun held her back.

  "Leave him be," the old Korean cautioned. "He cleans up the mess Russian meddling has wrought." Remo found his way down the stone slope to the valley floor. The trash stretched up high before him. He had spotted the deformed bundles from above. They decorated the nearer slope of the trash heap.

  The Russian sailors from the Novgorod looked like mutated mockeries of human beings. Misshapen white bones jutted out like armor-plated spines on deformed dinosaurs. Uniforms were intermingled with flesh. Buttons were fused to the exposed radius of one man's twisted forearm.

  From the mound of garbage, Remo heard a pathetic wheezing. He quickly scaled the pile. Gennady Zhilnikov had survived the process. The Russian submarine captain was deformed almost beyond recognition. Yet there was a glimmer of human intelligence in his pleading eyes. He held his arms out in prayer.

  Remo killed him gently, mercifully.

  Afterward he went through the others, checking for signs of life. No more had survived.

  Just to be certain he searched for the body of Jack James. He found the Mayanan executive president lying dead on a rotting heap of trash, his head haloed by his own twisted limbs.

  Turning, he hiked back up the hill. The others were waiting for him in the Jeep.

  "I guess they just don't make gods like they used to," Remo announced as he climbed into the passenger seat.

  As seagull squawks echoed loud and shrill across the valley behind them, the Jeep turned lazily around. They headed back down the rutted ravine path.

  Chapter 33

  They had no choice but to release him.

  Ever since Nikolai Garbegtrov had been trundled through the high gates of the Russian embassy in New Briton, his Green Earth followers had been gathering outside. They set up tents, lit candles, carried signs, sang protest songs.

  The mob was growing, and it was getting ugly. They were demanding the release of the former premier.

  The Russians had planned to spirit their traitorous former leader back home to a prison cell and a lengthy sentence. But this was a new era. And with cameras lined up beyond the gates, the entire world was watching.

  They couldn't let the world see them dragging the screeching Garbegtrov from the building, couldn't risk a riot breaking out. In the end the Russians caved to the pressure of the protesters.

  When Nikolai Garbegtrov stepped out the front gate in the company of two Green Earth elders, a cheer rose up.

  The former Russian leader was wearing a white cap with the green Green Earth emblem on the front.

  The men with him wore identical caps. So did many in the crowd. The caps were made from 100% recycled material. Garbegtrov loved recycling. Garbegtrov loved Mother Earth.

  The ex-premier raised his hands in victory. "Hello, friends!" Garbegtrov yelled to the crowd. The crowd yelled back. There was love in Garbegtrov's eyes. There was love right back at him in the eyes of the protesters, his people. Everyone loved everyone.

  Garbegtrov was about to speak of his confinement. To tell those gathered about the hardships and horrors he had endured during his day of captivity. Hours during which he had been warm and fed, unlike the people who had suffered years in freezing hunger in gulags while he had presided, fat and uncaring, over old Soviet Russia.

  He was going to say many things, but something strange suddenly happened.

  Garbegtrov saw something small and slow flying toward him from the direction of the street. So slow was it that he could clearly see that it was a small pebble.

  It was an odd thing to see a pebble fly. Odder still when it seemed to abruptly pick up speed and bank upward.

  The instant the pebble disappeared, the former Soviet premier felt the warm sun on his head. But that wasn't right. Sunlight had not touched his scalp in many months. It could only be doing so now if...

  With sudden shock, he felt for his hat. His hand touched skin. He turned, horrified, to the crowd.

  They had seen it. So had the cameras. From Europe to America, all around the world, everyone saw the tattoo emblazoned across his bald head. U.S.A. #1.

  From the crowd there came a collective gasp of disbelief. It turned into a full-throated roar of rage. The America-haters of the Green Earth movement were not alone. Garbegtrov's former supporters in the media who shared their opinions screamed outrage.

  Placards and cameras fell. Microphones and candles were trampled underfoot. As one, the crowd charged.

  Garbegtrov tried running for the gates, but the Russians had locked them behind him.

  The former dictator of the Soviet Union fell whimpering to his pudgy knees, shielding the hateful slogan across his scalp even as the enraged crowd fell upon him.

  NO ONE NOTICED the thin man with the thick wrists who stood across the street bouncing pebbles in his hand.

  As the crowd tore former Soviet Premier Nikolai Garbegtrov to shreds, Remo Williams let the stones slip from his hand, one by one. When he walked away he was whistling.

  Chapter 34

  Two days later Remo was sitting on the kitchen counter of the Connecticut duplex he and Chiun shared. There was a dictionary on the counter next to him. It was open to the Em. Remo was on the phone with Smith.

  "The situation is under control," the CURE director was saying. "The authorities are investigating the matter. The good news is that all world leaders have departed Mayana safely."

  "Whoopie-ding," Remo said. "After seeing those guys in action up close, I think most of the world would send us a thank-you bouquet if we'd let them get turned inside out. So does all this mean we have to go to war with Nishitsu again?"

  "It does not look that way," Smith replied. "While the Nishitsu Corporation did have men in Mayana, according to the information I have uncovered, they were there as saboteurs. They wanted to protect the technology that was, after all, developed by them before it was stolen by the Russians."

  "Chiun will be disappointed. I think he was psyching himself up for the annual Japanese head harvest."

  "About the Vaporizer. The device is being dismantled. Teams have been dispatched to the old Jamestown site to search for any more bodies among the trash."

  "I still want to know how they got their hands on the Nishitsu technology," Remo said.

  "Blame Alexei Aliyev," Smith replied.

  Remo frowned. "Who?"

  "He is a Russian who was kept at the site in the guise of a janitor. Dr. Sears took instructions from Aliyev. He was shot sometime during the confusion. You did not know?"

  "No," Remo said.

  "Perhaps he offended Jack James in some way. In any event Aliyev worked on the vibration-suit project years ago. When the project was canceled, he was out of a job. He offered his technical know-how to the highest bidder, which wound up being the Mayanan government. He adapted the old technology to the Vaporizer. As I explained to you before, it is basically the same way the krahseevah could travel through phone lines, albeit on a much grander scale."

  "I'll say. You should have seen the size of that dump, Smitty. They'll be cleaning it for years."

  "Perhaps," Smith said. "Or perhaps they will just leave it as is and close down the area. An abandoned garbage dump would be a fitting monument to Jack James."

  "I still can't get over that one," Remo said. "I'm ama
zed he got as far as he did."

  "It is not so surprising," Smith said. "While insane, James was always a charismatic individual. That quality would not have been altered by plastic surgery. The world thought he was dead so no one would think to look for him among the living. And he emerged back in the public eye enough years after his false death that memory had faded."

  "I guess," Remo said. "The harder thing for me to figure out is why the Russians let that Aloha guy get away."

  "Actually that has been a serious problem ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many former government scientists have decided to offer their services to the highest bidder. This is a real threat to the world as far as biological, chemical and nuclear weapons are concerned. Unfortunately Aliyev is just one of many."

  "As usual you're a regular Little Mary Sunshine, Smitty. If there isn't anything else, let's end on that happy note."

  Remo hung up the phone.

  Hopping down from the counter, he snatched up the dictionary. Book in hand, he went out into the living room.

  Chiun sat in front of the big-screen TV. The old Korean was watching the news.

  "I looked that thing up," Remo announced.

  Chiun didn't turn. "What are you braying about now?"

  "That thing you said you want to be called. Reigning Master Emeritus. I looked it up." He read from the dictionary. "Emeritus. It means 'holding after retirement an honorary title corresponding to that held last during active service.'" Snapping the book shut, he glanced at his teacher, a look of triumphant expectation on his face.

  "You move your lips when you read," Chiun said blandly.

  "Honorary shmonorary, this means you're still Reigning Master, doesn't it?" Remo accused. "Even while I'm the Master of Sinanju you're the Master of Sinanju, too. And not a Master or retired Master or former Master, but the Master."

  "I suppose it could be interpreted that way," said the Master of Sinanju.

  "But I'm still Reigning Master, right? Or have the last three decades just been about jerking me around?"