Feast or Famine td-107 Read online

  Chapter 19

  Harold Smith was deep in cyberspace when his secretary buzzed him that he had visitors.

  "It's those two," she whispered.

  "Send them in, Mrs. Mikulka," said Smith, looking up from his desktop screen. It was a relief, he thought, not to have to reach for the old concealed stud under the edge of his old desk to send the oldstyle monitor humming down into its concealed desktop well. That was in the days before he had the new system with its screen mounted flush under the black glass desktop. He still sometimes missed that system with its comforting green monochrome screen. It matched his Dartmouth tie.

  When Mrs. Mikulka popped her blue-haired head in, Smith merely looked up and nodded his gray head. No one could see the buried screen except the man seated before it.

  Mrs. Mikulka withdrew as Remo and Chiun entered.

  Remo said, "Hiyah, Smitty," and tossed the FedEx envelope across the room.

  It went sailing over Smith's head, out of reach. At the last moment, it abruptly boomeranged back to settle before him, square with the corners of the desk, unnoticed by Smith, who was still looking over his shoulder, expecting it to bounce off the office picture window.

  Smith blinked, looked about and finally saw the package, resting on the desk as if it had been there all along. He cleared his throat, unimpressed with Remo's theatrics.

  Stripping back the cardboard zipper, he emptied the contents on the smooth desktop.

  A single wing fluttered to the black glass. It was backlit by the amber screen below. Touching a key, Smith reset the screen to a pure white. The light highlighted the outline and veins of the tiny wing.

  Chiun was uncharacteristically silent as Smith studied the wing's delicate structure.

  "You're being ignored," Remo whispered to him.

  Chiun shook his head. "I ignored him first."

  "Well, he's ignoring you back."

  "He is too late. He is the ignoree, while I am the true ignorer. "

  "Well, you know the etiquette of ignoring," said Remo in an unconvinced tone of voice.

  Smith's patrician nose was almost touching the desktop now. He made assorted faces he was entirely unaware of.

  "What do you say, Smitty?" Remo prompted.

  Smith looked up, squint eyed. "It appears to be a bee's wing. Unremarkable."

  "Well," said Remo. "Is it a bumblebee or a drone?"

  Smith sat back and began working his keyboard.

  Remo came around the desk to watch.

  Smith had brought up a color replica of a drone honey bee and was manipulating it. One wing broke off and enlarged itself. It matched in outline and vein patterns the detached wing resting on the desk.

  "It is a drone's wing. An ordinary drone," he said.

  "No, it was a not-bee," Chiun corrected.

  "I am unfamiliar with that terminology," Smith admitted.

  "Examine that wing more closely," Chiun suggested.

  Smith did.

  "What do you see?" asked Chiun.

  "A common drone honey bee wing, according to my data base."

  Chiun shook his head slowly. "The creature that possessed that wing owned intelligence and malevolence. It was not a bee, common or otherwise."

  Smith brought up an image of a killer bee.

  It was completely different and the wing structure was different, as well. The killer bee was no different than a typical honeybee-long of body but not as long or distinctively colored as a yellow jacket. The drone, on the other hand, was plump and fuzzy.

  "This is not a killer bee's wing," Smith said flatly.

  "True. It belongs to a killer not-bee."

  Smith looked to Remo for help. Remo rolled his eyes and pretended to find the overhead fluorescent lights of interest.

  "I fail to understand," Smith said helplessly.

  "You are excused," Chiun said, and floated over to the picture window to contemplate Long Island Sound.

  "I guess we came a long way for nothing," Remo told Smith.

  "There is word out of the L.A. Coroner's Office."

  "Yeah?"

  "The new coroner has pronounced the deaths of Dr. Nozoki, Dr. Krombold and the others as the result of killer-bee stings."

  "That can't be!" Remo exploded. "We saw how those people bought it. A garden-variety bumblebee got them."

  "Drone honey bees," Smith said carefully, "cannot sting. And more importantly, the venom of the Africanized killer bee is a neurotoxin, which is to say it affects the nervous system, not merely the breathing passages, as does ordinary bee venom."

  "That makes no sense."

  "It does if someone has crossbred a new kind of bee.

  "That's possible ...."

  "Since the advent of killer bees in this hemisphere, Remo, there have been many attempts to interdict the killer bee in its northern migration. All have failed. The defense of last resort has been to cross these feral bees with more-gentle domestic bees in order to obtain a less virulent and aggressive strain."

  "How's it coming?"

  "It has been an utter failure. But that is not to say that someone could not attempt to create a more virulent strain of bee, if they chose to reverse the breeding program."

  "What's the point of that?"

  "It is obvious," said Chiun, turning from the window.

  Remo and Harold Smith looked at him, unspoken questions in their eyes.

  "To kill," said Chiun.

  Remo and Smith looked at one another, their faces undergoing various changes of expression-Remo's dubious, Smith's lemony.

  Clearing his throat, Smith swept the bee's wing into the FedEx container and attacked his keyboard. He brought up a list of the dead to date, including the two pilots.

  "Doyal T. Rand was the first," he said.

  "We don't know that," said Remo. "He wasn't stung. His brains were eaten out."

  "Let us assume he was the first because the man who autopsied him subsequently died of anaphylactic shock."

  "Okay," allowed Remo.

  "That was Dr. Lemuel Quirk. The New York coroner-"

  "M.E.," Remo corrected.

  "-also was killed by the sting of a bee, although no bee was found."

  "Why?"

  "Simple. To cover up the first killing."

  "In Los Angeles, three people died at a new restaurant of bee venom, although none appeared stung and no bee parts were found in their stomachs, according to Dr. Wurmlinger."

  "How did you know that?" asked Remo.

  "I talked to the assistant deputy coroner in Los Angeles."

  "Oh."

  "A Dr. Nozoki who autopsied them died of a bee sting. As did a Fox cameraman. As did Dr. Gideon Krombold. Again, let us assume a cover-up."

  "By bees."

  "Using bees," said Smith.

  "Idiots," said Chiun.

  "What was that?" Smith asked the Master of Sinanju.

  "Nothing," said Chiun, resuming his enjoyment of Long Island Sound.

  Smith returned to his glowing amber list. "The bee attempted to kill you and Chiun. It died. Yet another bee followed you from the coroner's office and apparently attempted to finish the job by bringing down your flight."

  "It's a chain of BS, but it's solid," Remo admitted.

  "That leaves but one question."

  "Actually, it leaves a zillion. But what's the one on your mind?" Remo asked.

  "If the intelligence behind this-and there can be no mistaking that one does exist-is intent on killing everyone involved with those two deaths, why are Tammy Terrill and Dr. Wurmlinger still alive?"

  "Search me."

  "Because they are useful," said Chiun.

  "Useful to whom?" asked Smith. "Who could so perfectly control this new strain of feral bees that they function as assassins?"

  Chiun made a face at the misuse of the honorable term assassin.

  "And how are they controlled?" added Smith.

  "Sounds like Bee-Master to me," muttered Remo.

  "Who?"

  "
Bee-Master. It was a comic-book character I used to read about back at the orphanage."

  Smith made the lemony face of a man who had bitten into a persimmon unsuspectingly.

  "We are dealing with reality here," he said.

  "Not if bees can think and attack people they don't like," Remo returned.

  Smith made an uncomfortable noise in his throat.

  "If this chain of deaths began with Rand and the owners of that restaurant, what do they have in common?" Remo queried.

  Smith posed the question to his computer, and it came up with side-by-side profiles of Doyal T. Rand and the Notos.

  "Rand is a genetic genius. It was he who perfected the current method of roach-population control by shutting off their pheromones."

  "What about the others?" asked Remo.

  "They had just opened a restaurant that served bugs."

  "I sure hope the thunderbug isn't back," said Remo to Chiun. Chiun made a disgusted face.

  "Ordinarily," Smith mused, "I would not connect two such dissimilar deaths were it not for the fact that in both cases the medical examiner who autopsied the victims succumbed to bee stings. That is the only link. The cover-up of the attacks. It is wrong."

  "It's criminal," Remo admitted.

  "No, it is wrong in this sense-if a serial killer is at work, his signature should be static. The cause of death-the modus operandi-may vary."

  "You think we're dealing with a serial killer?"

  "I am nearly certain of it. And the only connection between the two victims involves insects."

  "The killer is a bug on bugs, you mean?"

  "An insane person who must be identified and apprehended."

  "Well, what can we do?"

  "At this stage, little. I believe it is time to bring in the FBI. They have psychological profilers who can glean remarkably accurate information on the subject from details surrounding the killings and crime scene."

  "What about us?" wondered Remo.

  "Go home. Stand by. I will call upon you when I need you."

  "What about Wurmlinger?"

  "He is in police custody, according to my sources. He is going nowhere for now."

  Smith had already turned his attention to his computer system, so Remo motioned for Chiun to follow him out.

  Chiun passed from the room, presenting his disdainful back to the emperor who had neither heeded his wisdom nor understood it.

  Before closing the door, he allowed himself to peek back at Smith the Mad.

  The Mad One was still intent upon his oracles, so Chiun closed the door with a nerve jangling jar.

  No one ignored the Master of Sinanju without penalty. Not even the emperor of the wealthiest empire of the modern world.

  Chapter 20

  At FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virgina, Edward E. Eishied received a strange inter-Bureau e-mail message signed ASAC Smith.

  He had heard of Assistant Special Agent in Charge Smith. He had never met him. But Smith was an FBI legend. It was said he was a retired agent given special investigative status by the director. It was also said the faceless Smith was really a cover for whoever sat in the director's chair, going back to the halcyon days of Hoover. J. Edgar, not Herbert.

  No one knew for sure. But everyone knew that whether it was a cross e-mail message or the man's graham-cracker voice on the line, what Smith said went.

  In this case, it was an e-mail. The text read, "Require psychological profiles on unknown subject. See attachment for details. Needed ASAP."

  Eishied snapped to attention. This was his meat. He had worked every serial-killer case from Ted Bundy to the Unabomber and he had nailed the essentials of every psychological profile he ever undertook.

  The weird part was Eishied knew of no case not already under active investigation.

  He sat back, expecting to find details of some horrific new killer of the ritualistic type.

  Instead, he read the incoming data and slowly slumped in his seat.

  "This is a test," he muttered. "No, it's a joke."

  But ASAC Smith had no reputation for humor. In fact, by reputation he was the most button-down SOB in the Bureau hierarchy.

  Downloading the file, Eishied went at it. It was going to take some real brainpower to profile this guy. He picked up the telephone and speed-dialed the Chicago office.

  "Ralph? Eishied here. I need your assist on something."

  "I was just going to call you. I just received the weirdest request from no less than ASAC Smith himself."

  "Does it involve killer bees?"

  "Yeah. You on it?"

  "Just downloaded the file into my machine. The question is, are we supposed to work together or independently?"

  "My guess is that Smith's looking for every pristine angle."

  "Okay, no communication until we turn in our reports.

  "Good luck."

  "Same to you," said Eishied, then hung up.

  As he fired up his laser printer for generating a hard copy, Edward Eishied muttered, "I sure hope we come up with the same profile ...."

  Chapter 21

  Tammy Terrill had never seen anything like it.

  "What is with you people?" she complained to the L.A. chief of detectives.

  "We're not prepared to give a statement at this time," he returned.

  "I gave my statement to you!"

  "That's different. You're a witness. You're obligated to give your statement."

  Tammy stared at the transcription of her statement, which lay on Chief of Detectives Thomas Gregg's desk, along with a pen so she could sign it. They were in a brightly lit interrogation room in the downtown L.A. police headquarters. It looked nothing like the interrogation rooms Tammy had seen on TV. It was too nice.

  "If you don't give me an interview, I won't sign that," she warned.

  Chief of Detectives Gregg eyed her with no flicker of emotion. He didn't look much like a cop, though he talked just like one. He was too tanned to be a cop, and his hair was too sun bleached. Even for a California cop.

  "Gary, have Miss Terrill here held as a material witness."

  "You can't do that!"

  Gregg looked Tammy dead in the eye the way a bird looks at a worm. "We need a signed statement or we need you. What's it going to be, Miss Terrill?"

  Tammy signed the statement. "This is under protest."

  "Just spell your name right," Gregg said woodenly. They had all been like that, wooden and unemotional, when they had descended upon the L.A. County Morgue and sorted through the bodies.

  Tammy had tried to get their theories on the case before they got too busy.

  "We just got here," Gregg had said.

  "I saw it all," Tammy told him. "It was killer bees. Ask him. He's big on bugs."

  At that point, Dr. Wurmlinger introduced himself and threw cold water on Tammy's new lead. "I confess I have no explanation for what has happened here," he said in a helpless voice.

  "Tell them it was killer bees. You know it was killer bees. I know it was killer bees. Just tell them."

  Wurmlinger looked as lost as a termite on plastic. "The bee that stung them could not have killed them. Other than that, I am at a loss for an explanation," he said.

  After that, Tammy and Wurmlinger were separated and taken downtown. There, Tammy told them everything she had seen to the point when Dr. Krombold had succumbed, finishing with, "It stung me, too, but I have the skull of a crockery pot, so I didn't die."

  Chief of Detectives Gregg seemed unimpressed by any of it. He just asked methodical questions and expressed doubt only when Tammy failed to identify her cameraman by name.

  "They're so...common," she explained. "Like they're pod people, or something."

  Now, with her statement signed, Tammy was being released. Out in the corridor, she hunted up Wurmlinger. He was coming out of another interrogation room and looked as lost as a cockroach in an hourglass.

  "Hi."

  "Hello," he said dispiritedly.

  "Time for our inte
rview."

  "The police asked me to make no public statement."

  "I'm the media. We outrank the cops."

  Wurmlinger shook his long head slowly. "I am sorry. I must return home. I have had a very trying day."

  "It's about to become the greatest day of your life. Because you're about to become Fox News Network's resident bug expert."

  "No."

  "Just think of it!" Tammy said, throwing her arms wide. "Your face will be telecast from coast-to-coast. You'll be famous. You'll be asked to lecture. Hey, maybe you'll even get a date or two."

  Wurmlinger winced. "Goodbye," he said, exiting the building.

  Tammy watched him get into a cab and overheard him ask the driver to take him to the airport.

  Tammy whistled up a cab and gave her driver the same instruction.

  There was no way she was going to lose her story now.

  WURMLINGER WAS so preoccupied that Tammy had no trouble trailing him to the American Airlines counter, where he offered his return ticket to a clerk.

  After he left for his gate, she barged into line and accosted the same reservations clerk.

  "I need to go where that tall drink of ugly is going."

  "Brownsville, Texas."

  "Right. Texas. I'm going there."

  The reservations clerk cut her an open-ended return ticket to Brownsville, Texas, and Tammy loitered at an adjoining gate until the last boarding call came. She slipped aboard and took her seat without being noticed by Wurmlinger.

  At Brownsville, she was one of the first off the plane, which put her in a position to grab a cab before Wurmlinger collected his luggage.

  The cabbie wanted to know where she was going.

  "Just get me out of the airport, and I'll get back to you," Tammy told him, snapping open her cell phone.

  She dialed Clyde Smoot in New York.

  "What is Dr. Wurmlinger's address again?"

  "Didn't you find him?" Smoot asked.

  "I'm on center stage in something bigger than 'X-Files.' Just give me the address, Clyde."

  After it hit her ears, Tammy repeated it to the driver, and he gave the cab real gas.

  "This," Tammy said, "is the way to cover breaking news."

  Chapter 22

  Remo Williams was walking the halls of Castle Sinanju in North Quincy, Massachusetts.

  He was bored. There was nothing to do. Chiun was closeted in his private room doing God alone knew what while Grandma Mulberry-or whatever her name was-haunted various rooms like a cantankerous Korean ghost.