The Color of Fear td-99 Read online

  "You are one of our most capable operatives," her case officer assured her in the HQ building called the swimming pool because it had been built over an old municipal pool. "Your bravery is well documented."

  "Then do not destroy my career by sending me to America."

  "How would that destroy your career? This is a career-advancing assignment."

  Dominique took her tawny hair in her long, tapered fingers as if to wrench it out by the roots. Her green eyes rolled around in their sockets as if she were having an epileptic seizure.

  "I would lose my mind in America. I would go insane. I beg of you. Send another."

  "We have no others."

  Dominique Parillaud, code-named Agent Arlequin in the confidential casebooks of the DGSE, got off her trim knees and reclaimed her seat. Her manner became professional in the extreme.

  "What do you mean?" she inquired.

  "You are aware of the denied area called the Blot?"

  "I am aware of the Blot. Who cannot be aware of the Blot? It is a...blot. But I have never heard it called a denied area. For does Euro Beasley not charge admission?"

  "We have officially designated it as a denied area. Agents have gone in.." The case officer's voice trailed off, and he made a hopeless gesture with his hands.

  "They do not come out?"

  "They come out," he admitted. "They come out... changed."

  "How changed?"

  "Happy."

  "Happy. Is this bad?"

  The case officer waved his cigarette around his head describing distorted helices of tobacco smoke.

  "Happy and unmotivated. They were tasked with penetrating the subterranean chambers called Utilicanard in an attempt to explain the sudden and perverse increase in interest in the Blot."

  "I have not heard of this Utilicanard."

  "The cover story is that it is where they process their trash and refuse."

  Dominique Parillaud barked her next words. "Then they should sink the entire park and process that!"

  "Agents Papillon, Grillon and Sauterelle, all were sent into the Blot and all returned clutching overpriced Beasley souvenirs and unable to perform their duty to France."

  "Because they were made happy?"

  "Agent Grillon was made so happy that ever since he has taken great exception to insults leveled at Euro Beasley. But Agent Sauterelle came out quite frightened. He was afraid to go back in. On the other hand Agent Papillon could not stop throwing up for three days."

  "What did the poor man see?"

  "He could not articulate it beyond the pageantry and bright lights of the Blot. He mentioned a particularly vivid green, as I recall."

  Dominique Parillaud shot to her feet. "I hereby volunteer to penetrate the Blot."

  The case officer raised his hand.

  "No, I must insist. This is obviously a great mystery and must be dealt with." She straightened her spine, chin lifting in defiance. "I will go today. Immediately. I am not afraid. My fierce devotion to my country and my culture make me unafraid."

  "You are going to America," insisted her case officer.

  Whereupon Dominique Parillaud sank back into her chair and began weeping into a fresh linen handkerchief whose frilly edges were impregnated with cyanide in the event of her capture by hostile forces.

  "Your mission will be to monitor all unusual events pertaining to the Sam Beasley Corporation," her case officer explained. "If you can gain employment with them, so much the better."

  Dominique Parillaud threw her shoulders forward and plunged her face into the cupped handkerchief.

  "You will report daily, and-"

  With a cry of anger the case officer lunged across his desk. He threw himself across his best female agent, and the two ended up on the floor, rolling and clawing for possession of the cyanide-laced handkerchief that Dominique Parillaud was desperately holding on to with her strong, stubborn Gallic teeth.

  WHEN THE AIR FRANCE flight landed at Furioso International Airport, Dominique Parillaud at first considered hiding in the lavatory and taking the same plane back.

  But her duty to her country brought her out of the comfortable seat and out into the humid air of Florida.

  It was awful from the first minute, from the very second she deplaned.

  The air was hot and sticky. It clung to her perfectly milky skin, dampened her Parisian coiffure into a soggy mass like cornflakes and made her haute clothing chafe and itch like sackcloth.

  The people were boorish, their accents rude and bewildering. They actually pronounced their terminal consonants. And as for their attire, the only word to describe their gaudy pret-a-porter rags was abominable.

  At the grocery store there was no decent bread to be had. The cheeses were flavorless, and the wine would not pass for swill.

  And the food. Lamentable in the extreme. They used no sauces except for sauce piquante, which they spelled sometimes catsup and sometimes ketchup. There was no delicacy in their cooking, no art in their dress. Everything was heavy and oafish, from the food to the men, which Dominique Parillaud also sampled out of sheer need to find some meager comfort in this hot, brutish land.

  She found work in Sam Beasley World as an interpreter, but discovered nothing of importance. Except that they treated her-and all other employees-so horribly that she was forced to quit.

  It was no better in Vanaheim, California, although the strength-sapping mugginess was replaced by a delicious dry heat that after two months seemed to exert a severely deleterious effect on her motivation, much as the Florida heat had sapped her strength.

  At a good Vanaheim restaurant, where a valet parked her car for her, Dominique discovered an item on the menu called French fries. Her eyes lit up and she ordered them eagerly.

  "What will you be having with it?" the waiter asked.

  "Nothing. Just pile these French fries on a plate and give me your best house chardonnay."

  When they came, Dominique saw these fries were neither French nor palatable. If anything, they were fit only for the bland British palate. She toyed with them idly as she consumed an entire bottle of barely passable chardonnay.

  On another occasion she came upon French toast on a breakfast menu posted on a diner that she would ordinarily not otherwise enter, the smells coming from within it were so disagreeable.

  But Dominique did enter, ordering two portions of French toast. "And your best breakfast Bordeaux," she added.

  "No Bourdeaux, sorry."

  "Very well. Beaujolais, then."

  "We don't have an alcoholic-beverage license, ma'am," the waitress said.

  That was another strange thing. It was impossible to obtain beer or wine in many restaurants. Even bad beer or wine, of which the oafs produced in abundance.

  "Then give me a pot of coffee. Black."

  When the French toast arrived, Dominique saw with brimming eyes and it was not in any respect French, although it vaguely resembled a species of toast.

  She drank the entire pot of coffee, which tasted salty from the bitterness of her endless tears.

  The cinemas were singularly insufferable. It was all junk, as were the television programs. The only bright spots came twice a year, during the Bastille Day Jerry Lewis movie marathon and again on the American Labor Day when Jerry conducted a telethon. When he sang "You'll Never Walk Alone," Dominique hastily taped it, and it became instantly and forever her favorite song.

  She had never known that Jerry could sing.

  By the time of the affair of Beasley U.S.A., Dominique Parillaud was a dispirited shell of her former self, who contemplated suicide with whatever was at hand. Her case officer had steadfastly refused to allow her any of the cyanide pills, hollow teeth or deathlaced handkerchiefs of her trade.

  Thus she carried a tiny aerosol can of Black Flag bug killer. If need be she could swallow the nozzle and depress the trigger with the very strong and agile tongue whose talents had enabled her to climb the clerical ranks of the DSGE. Men appreciated her agile tongue. Or at leas
t Frenchmen did. American men made disgusting comments about her ability to French-kiss, then would not-or could not-explain why such kissing was ascribed to the French above all others.

  She had been in Virginia for three weeks, posing as a TV reporter for the European TV network, Europe 1, when the Second American Civil War unexpectedly broke out. Dominique's had been one of the first news trucks on the scene.

  It was the perfect cover. Apparently all Americans were obliged to obey the many rules and laws of the land, but for some reason journalists were exempt. Even foreign ones.

  Upon swooping down, Dominique discovered it was impossible to infiltrate the Petersburg National Battlefield, and had to content herself with eavesdropping on other news agencies, some of which had helicopters to spy on the battle below.

  It was an astonishing sight. Their country seemed poised to rend itself apart, and instead of showing concern for their future, all that mattered to then was the all-important story.

  Had they been French journalists covering a modern Reign of Terror, they would have been guillotined without benefit of trial, their treason was so great and so very apparent.

  When the battle finally broke out, the Confederate pickets withdrew and the press surged in. At first Dominique thought they were going to take sides themselves. They did not. Instead, they sought out the roar of battle, and their bravery before the sharp whistling of the subsonic musket balls would have been admirable had it not been so obviously the product of an utterly congenital foolishness.

  Nevertheless, Dominique picked her way through the park with its sticky pines and its idle Napoleon cannon and marveled when she came upon the battle how very much like uniforms of Napoleon III the soldiers' trappings were.

  It confirmed to her that Americans gave the world nothing of high culture, but only took from it.

  "I cannot tell one side from the other," she complained to an American journalist who was snapping pictures like a tourist at the Eiffel Tower. Wildly and without framing his shots.

  "It's simple. The blue versus the gray."

  "But they are all gray."

  "What are you, color-blind?"

  "Yes, I am color-blind."

  The handicap turned out to be a blessing when the great balloons of the Beasley Company descended moments later.

  Their effect was magical. Men lay down their arms and took up expressions of childlike wonder and awe when the cartoon faces showed themselves.

  And everyone spoke of the impossible pink color of it all. Dominique saw only bright light tinged with dull gray. For all colors were shades of gray to her green eyes. In her heart she envied the Americans for their ability to become so childlike at what was after all a blatantly commercial spectacle.

  But she had a mission to perform.

  The balloons did not drop out of a clear sky, she knew. Someone had to guide them to their landing area. And Dominique Parillaud was determined to discover that someone.

  For with the pressing crowd of soldiers in dark gray and light gray, and the outer ring of American TV reporters crowding close, it was impossible to reach the man she most wished to reach, Mickey Weisinger.

  AS THEY WALKED BACK into the Petersburg National Battlefield, the Master of Sinanju was saying, "It was very understanding of you to accept Emperor Smith's explanations of his failure."

  "I know he tried," Remo said unconcernedly. "Guess I have to give this back."

  He pulled from his pocket a coffin-shaped white pill.

  Chiun regarded it with quirking brows. "Smith's poison pill?"

  "Yeah, remember I confiscated it last time out? Swore I wouldn't give it back until he dug up my past."

  "You are very understanding today."

  "That time Smitty had to erase his computer data bases when the IRS swooped down on Folcroft probably crippled his ability to do deep background searches like he used to."

  "You are undoubtedly correct, my son."

  "Thank you, Little Father."

  As they walked they came to a place where a screen of trees obscured their view of the pink shine that lay over the battlefield like an angelic aura.

  Remo's face abruptly darkened. "That damn Smith!" he said suddenly.

  "Remo!"

  "He had no intention of finding my folks. Never had."

  "Remo, what has come over you?"

  "When I see him again, I'm going to shake the lame excuses out of him, and then we'll see how motivated he is"

  "You are very childish, you know that?" Chiun fumed. "One minute you are well behaved and then next you are throwing a temper tantrum like a spoiled child."

  "You should talk."

  "Me? I-"

  They passed through the pines and came upon Crater Field again. The pink glow touched their face like an angel's kiss.

  "I am sorry I raised my voice to you, Remo," Chiun said, suddenly mollified.

  "And I am sorry I got out of line, Little Father. You know I think the world of you."

  "And well you should," Chiun purred contentedly.

  Remo spotted a figure in a slip dress and beret. "Hey, isn't that April May?"

  "Yes, she is sneaking away."

  "Smith said to find out what she knows. Why don't we follow her?"

  They returned to the screen of pines, their feet not disturbing the brown carpet of needles any more than did the passing daddy longlegs spiders that patrolled the area.

  As they blended into the intermittent shadows, becoming hunters again, their faces lost their placid cast and they became hard of eye. But they said nothing.

  MARC MOISE couldn't for the life of him figure it out. As chief communications officer of Operation Crater, it was he who miked the battlefield so that all enemy operations could be monitored. He had planted the mikes personally. Video cameras were not an option. They were too big to hide in the treetops without running the risk of detection.

  But when the balloons landed, they carried remote cameras, and Marc was busy monitoring the feeds from those.

  That was the worst part. During the balloon launch, he had been preoccupied inside the mobile communications van parked down the highway. After the balloons had been launched, Bob Beasley had entered the van, saying "Carry on" in a gruff tone of voice entirely unlike his usual avuncular one.

  But since he was practically Sam Beasley reincarnate, Marc Moise had carried on.

  When the first video feeds came in, Marc duly taped them for later analysis and evaluation. They showed Mickey Weisinger giving the performance of his insincere life and winning the crowd over.

  It was the lights. Marc didn't know how it was the lights. But he saw the way the crowd had turned-just as the crying faces of children changed for the better when Mongo or Dingbat or any of those other twodimensional idiot grins flashed their way.

  As it happened, the seated figure of Bob Beasley chuckled from the other console. "Give an American kid a choice between the keys to the kingdom of heaven and two free tickets to Beasleyland, and the little bastards will snatch up the tickets nine times out of ten."

  The voice didn't sound quite like Bob Beasley's, Marc thought as he struggled to catch every word coming through his earphones.

  Then his heart jumped so high in his throat he opened his mouth to let it out.

  Bob Beasley emerged from the Crater and gave the cheering soldiers a hearty wave of approval!

  "But-" Morse sputtered.

  A chill ran down his hunched-over spine. Something was not right here. Bob Beasley couldn't be out at the field. Bob Beasley was seated at his back.

  Marc got a grip on himself. This was some fluke, some nutty glitch. Maybe the figure he was seeing was some animatronic robot. Maybe the situation was too dangerous to risk the real Bob Beasley, valuable corporate spokesman that he was, in the field, and that was a double waving to the crowd. Sure. A double. The guy snapping switches behind him was the authentic Bob Beasley. That was it.

  But the body language of the man on the field was definitely that of Bob Bea
sley. No actor was that good. Not when playing to an ignorant audience.

  So, while pretending to do his job, Marc Moise turned slowly in his seat to better visualize the man in the console chair.

  The face was turned almost away, but the flat cheek and a suggestion of a mustache were visible. It was frosty white. Bob Beasley's mustache was dark brown. It was said he dyed it to seem youthful.

  He was talking low and vehemently into his mike, and the words he spoke were repeated by Mickey Weisinger, several miles away.

  Then a cold gray eye rolled in Moise's direction, and a frosty voice said, "What the fuck are you looking at, Moose? Get back to work!"

  Marc Moise shifted in his seat, trying to keep the contents of his bladder from escaping his body.

  The man behind him was not Bob Beasley. That man in the field was. And the voice that had called him by the hated nickname, Moose, made the short hairs at the back of his neck bunch up and squirm.

  He knew that voice. It was imprinted on his brain, a part of his earliest childhood experiences. It was the voice that had cheered him up on Sunday nights before a flickering TV screen and assured him that even though school started the next day, all was right with the world.

  It was the long-dead yet immortal voice of Uncle Sam Beasley!

  Chapter 15

  Bilious black smoke was still rising above the Norman ramparts of the Sorcerer's Chateau of Euro Beasley when the first five-seat Gazelle utility helicopters swarmed over the theme park. They did not land. They merely dropped like clatter-winged dragonflies and moved through the park's airspace, cockpits sealed, pilots heavily goggled and gasmasked as their beating rotors whipped up and dispelled the combination of black camouflage smoke and pepper gas that lay like a pall over the so-called Enchanted Village.

  When the helicopters had beat the pungent exhalation into harmless dissipating rags, the SuperPumas came floating in.

  They did not land, either. Instead, red-bereted French Foreign Legion paratroopers rappeled down in full combat gear.

  When their black boots touched ground, they deployed through the deserted Main Street, U.S.A., encountering no resistance.