The Color of Fear td-99 Read online

  "Damn, there goes that damn April May!"

  They reached the spot where the helicopter had lifted off. There was no sign of anyone or anything.

  Then the Master of Sinanju noticed the drag marks in the dirt at their feet.

  "Behold, Remo. A man was dragged to the helicopter."

  "Yeah. And these small footprints on either side belong to Dominique. She must have dragged someone away. The question is who?"

  "Let us discover that."

  They followed the footprint-decorated drag marks to an upthrust protuberance on the park grounds. It was a small volcano, as volcanoes go. Probably twenty feet high. The sides were molded of some kind of streaked red clay. When they climbed it, the skin crumbled under their feet, setting bits of clay rolling and bouncing down to the base.

  At the lip of the crater, they looked down and saw a ladder disappearing into a very black hole.

  "Looks like the back way in," muttered Remo.

  "Come," said Chiun, swinging around so he could take hold of the ladder's rungs.

  They climbed down into the darkness, which proved to be a flat plug of glassy obsidian.

  "Dead end," said Remo.

  The Master of Sinanju said nothing as he moved about the inner walls of the cone. It was rough but not terribly irregular. Except for a single knob of obsidian. Chiun took hold of it, pushing and pulling it experimentally until, with a jolt, the obsidian plug dropped two inches, then continued dropping with the smoothness of an elevator.

  Black-and-yellow safety stripes appeared on the walls as Remo and Chiun rode past.

  "How do we know this isn't a trap?" Remo asked.

  "How could anyone trap a Master of Sinanju and his trusty badger?"

  "That's 'gofer.'"

  "Consider it a promotion to a higher order of animal," Chiun said magnanimously.

  At the bottom of the cone, they found themselves standing before one end of a concrete tunnel with a great black mouse-head silhouette painted onto the floor.

  Then they smelled a smell they knew very, very well.

  "Death," said Chiun.

  "A lot of death," said Remo.

  There were a lot of dead, they discovered as they crept along the concrete tunnels and corridors of the French Utilicanard. People lying dead at their desks, in their dormlike rooms, even lying fallen over their maintenance brooms.

  And every one of them clutched an amber lollipop shaped like the head of Mongo Mouse and smelling of almonds.

  "Dead about two days," said Remo, touching a cool fallen body.

  The dead all wore the jumpsuits they associated with Utiliduck workers except these weren't white as they were in the States but a very chic peach.

  "Looks like a mass suicide," Remo said, straightening up. "When the French bombs started to hit, they must have decided to take the hard way out rather than risk capture."

  "This is very sinister. Could a color have done this?"

  "I dunno. In fact, I don't get this color stuff. How can colors affect us this way?"

  "Colors are very powerful. The ancient Egyptians knew this. Pharaoh slept in a red room because it helped him to sleep. And when he died, he was entombed in a room of gold because this helped his body to retain its royalty throughout eternity. In my village it is well-known that scarlet wards off evil demons."

  "I don't buy that superstitious bulldooky. Color is color. I don't even have a favorite color."

  "Not even pink?"

  "Well, maybe pink. Pink is good."

  "Pink is exceedingly good."

  And they both found themselves smiling at the thought of the color pink.

  As they walked along, a sour smell assailed their sensitive nostrils. They followed it.

  "Fresh," said Remo.

  It was, they discovered when they entered a control room marked in French, Defense D'Entrer.

  It was the master control room. There was no mistaking that. There were grids of video monitors showing every approach and attraction in the park. Control consoles literally ringed the room.

  And on the main console was a still-dribbling splash of fresh vomit.

  "Someone did not take their poison," said Chiun, looking about the empty room.

  "No, but someone took him."

  "I detect the faint perfume of the French woman."

  "Yeah. Great. Now we're the only ones here with the entire French army laying siege outside. Time to call Smitty."

  Remo picked up a satellite telephone and tried to dial Harold Smith in America. The trouble was Remo didn't know the country code for U S.A. And when he finally got an operator speaking French, she hung up on him the minute he spoke two words, one of them "please."

  Sighing, Remo tossed the handset to the Master of Sinanju. "Just get me past the language barrier."

  When Harold Smith came on the line, Chiun tossed the handset back to Remo.

  "Smitty. We're not doing well here."

  "One moment, Remo," said Smith absently. "This is very strange."

  "What is?"

  "I have unusual activity on Beasley company credit cards."

  "Well, I can guarantee you the big spenders aren't over here in Euro Beasley."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "Because Chiun and I just penetrated their lower regions, and they're all dead."

  "Dead. How dead? I mean, how long dead?"

  "A day or two. They took poison."

  "Cyanide," hissed Chiun.

  "Chiun says cyanide. Looks like Jonestown, except with lollipops."

  "Remo, this is very suggestive. Obviously Euro Beasley is not what it seems. It is much more than a theme park."

  "So far, every Beasley theme park has been more than a theme park. But we missed one guy."

  "You have a prisoner?"

  "No, French Intelligence does. For all our troubles, we got yellowed."

  "Remo, I think you are breaking up. Did you say yellow?"

  "Yeah. The yellow light got us. I'll never look at a canary the same way again. Chiun and I took off for the hills when it hit."

  "It is a wise rabbit which knows when to employ the ancient and honorable strategy of retreat," Chiun called out.

  "By the time we got back," Remo continued, "that French agent had taken off with the one survivor. Whatever he knows, the French will have it by tomorrow is my guess."

  Smith was silent a moment. "This is twice you have encountered mysterious colored lights."

  "No," said Remo, "this is twice Chiun and I have been run over by these colored lights. I thought green was bad, but it was over quick. I never want to be yellowed again."

  "Yet you enjoyed the pink light."

  "Oh, yeah, that," said Remo, breaking into a pleasant smile at the memory. "I'd gladly walk through a football field lit by greens and yellows if there's some pink on the other side."

  "Remo, listen carefully. These lights must represent some new technology the Beasley people have discovered. Look around for some sign of controls."

  "Controls?"

  "Yes, someone had to be controlling the yellow light."

  "Hey, Chiun, check around the room. Smitty wants-"

  "I have found many buttons with the names of strange colors on them," Chiun announced.

  "Smitty, we found it."

  "I have found it," Chiun said loudly.

  "Remo, I am unable to locate any Beasley corporate officers. That means that man is our only lead. I want you to find him and extract from him what he knows. Only by determining the reason the French have seen fit to quarantine Euro Beasley can we get to the root of this conflict."

  "Gotcha. How're things on the home front?"

  "The Senate is debating a resolution outlawing the teaching of French in our major universities."

  "That has my vote."

  "The Modern Language Association has issued a strong statement condemning the French ministry of culture."

  "You want my opinion, the only culture the French have belongs in a petri dish."
r />   "They are calling for the expunging of all borrowed French words from American dictionaries. And the Academie Frangais has retaliated by demanding their French words back. They are also renaming Parisian streets named after Americans."

  "How many of those can there be?"

  "There are the Avenue du General Eisenhower, Avenue du Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Rue Lincoln, to name just three. Or were," Smith added.

  "This is ridiculous," said Remo.

  "This is a cultural war. But it threatens to escalate into the real thing. Remo, find that Beasley employee and get him out of French hands at all costs. No doubt he knows the secret behind this colored-light technology. I have a problem to solve."

  "What problem?"

  "Why the Beasley Corporation is sending scores of its employees to London."

  "Good luck," said Remo, hanging up.

  He turned just in time to see the Master of Sinanju bring a tiny ivory fist into contact with one of the control panels.

  It shattered. Buttons flew upward to ricochet off the ceiling, and the smell of burning insulation curled up in smoky tentacles.

  "What now?" asked Remo.

  And when Chiun pointed to a now-broken bank of shielded buttons marked with names like Supergreen and Hotpink, Remo said, "Good job."

  Chapter 25

  When he woke up, Rod Cheatwood knew he was in deep trouble.

  The last thing he remembered was the green light coming back at his console video screen. It was Supergreen. No one had ever tried to project hypercolor by video. Technically it should not have worked. But it did. Rod had upchucked and blacked out. Splat.

  When he woke up, he was on a hard bunk in a windowless concrete cell. The walls were nice, though. Teal. Very chic. Worrisomely chic, inasmuch as Rod had no idea where he was or who had him. But he did have his suspicions.

  Rod glanced around the cell. There was a stainless-steel toilet, washbowl and a third plumbing fixture he realized with a sickening sensation was a bidet.

  "I am definitely in deep," he muttered.

  When they came for him, they wore black balaclavas pulled over their heads with only their eyes and mouths showing. They conducted him to a featureless room and sat him down on a hard wooden stool.

  Something that looked like a dessert cart was wheeled up, but when he looked into the tray, Rod saw implements that made his empty stomach quail.

  "You don't have to torture me," he said weakly.

  "Parlez-vous francais?"

  Rod had picked up a little French during his stay, but only enough to get by. This was no time to stumble over shades of meaning. "No, I speak only English."

  The eyes behind the balaclavas winced. They began whispering among themselves. Rod caught the gist of it. They were asking how they could be expected to interrogate an American who did not speak French if they faced a six-month jail sentence for speaking American. No one wanted to go to jail for six months. Not even in the service of his beloved country.

  After conferring by telephone, the interrogators obtained some kind of a special dispensation from the ministry of culture and they brought out the crude electronic device resembling a toy railroad transformer with two wires and steely alligator clips at each end.

  Rod instantly crossed his legs, thinking, They're out to fry my balls.

  "I'll tell you anything you want!" he bleated.

  "Tell us who is behind this outrage against our country."

  "Sam Beasley."

  "He is dead."

  "I mean the Sam Beasley Corporation."

  "Why did you not commit suicide like the others? Why are you so important?"

  "I'm not important. Not that important."

  "But you must be. You did not consume your suicide candy."

  "What are you, nuts? I'm not dying for the fucking Sam Beasley Corporation. You have any idea how they treat their employees?"

  "So many others did ...."

  "Well, I don't think they got screwed quite the way I did."

  "How did you get screwed?" one interrogator asked, wincing at the ugliness of the junk word.

  "I don't think I can tell you that," Rod said, thinking if he spilled the beans on the TV-remote finder, the French would leap to patent it. Never mind standing him in front of a firing squad for coming up with the hypercolor laser in the first place.

  "Trade secret," he said.

  That was when one of them approached with the alligator clips extended in each hand, looking like he intended to jump-start a Tonka truck.

  "No, not my balls. Anything but my balls."

  When he felt the clips dig into his earlobes with their serrated steel teeth, Rod Cheatwood almost laughed with relief.

  A voice said, "Last chance to talk freely."

  And then someone spun a crank.

  The pain was so severe Rod Cheatwood saw sparks dance behind his clutched-tight eyelids and he began wishing the electric current would find another part-any part-of his body. Even his sensitive testicles.

  THE TRANSCRIPT of the interrogation of Rod Cheatwood was faxed to French Minister of Culture Maurice Tourette within ten minutes of being transcribed.

  He read it with quick sweeps of his eyes, a blue pencil poised over the document that was stamped Secret-d'etat.

  Finding a junk word, he crossed it out and inserted the correct form. Then he finished his perusal.

  When Tourette was at last done, he called the president of France.

  "Allo?"

  "I have just read the transcript of the Beasley prisoner interrogation," he said.

  "How can this be?" the president sputtered. "I myself have not yet received my fax copy."

  "Please. Do not say 'fax.' It is an outlaw word."

  "I will say what I please. I am le President. "

  "And I am the minister of culture. Do you wish to land in jail for six months?"

  "What have you learned?" said the president wearily.

  "They have developed a hypnotic rayon de l'energie which bends those exposed to it to their will."

  "Rayon de l'energie. What is a rayon de l'energie?"

  "It is the word that has replaced l-a-s-e-r, " said the culture minister, spelling the junk word because he knew that he, too, could technically land in jail merely for enunciating it.

  "I fail to grasp how a laser-I mean rayon de l'energie-could hypnotize. Do they not cut things?"

  "Oui. But this rayon de l'energie uses tinted light. Pink pacifies. Red boils the blood-"

  "Literally?"

  "Non. Figuratively. Yellow makes the heart quail in fear, and green insults the brain and stomach so that one vomits and loses one's wits."

  "What about blue?"

  "Blue?"

  "It is my favorite color. What does blue do?"

  "Blue," said the culture minister, "depresses."

  "Depresses? I have always believed that blue soothed. The sky is blue, non? And the oceans. They are very soothing to look upon."

  "True. But you are forgetting that when you are sad, you feel blue. Forlorn music is called le blues. "

  "Is that not a forbidden word?" the president asked pointedly.

  "Les bleus, then," the culture minister said, adding it to his working copy of his dictionary of official terms.

  "Proceed," said the president of France in a purring tone.

  "They have installed pink lights all over that Blot. It creates a sense of well-being and receptivity. Like cotton candy for the eyes and the brain."

  "It is no wonder that our poor citizens flock to the Blot."

  "This is an indefensible provocation, an act of cultural imperialism. They have subverted our people, our culture, our way of life. What do you intend to do about it?"

  "I must evaluate this fully."

  "France cries out for strong action. Retaliation in kind."

  "Do you propose that I have built a Parc Asterix on American soil and install pink rayon de l'energie lights everywhere?"

  "I meant military retaliation."
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  "I am not yet convinced this is the doing of Washington, but the lawless depredations of a private company. I will not be stampeded into-"

  "'Stampeded' is a junk word. I do not wish to report this conversation to the High Committee for the Defense and Expansion of the French Language."

  Unseen by the minister of culture, the French president rolled his eyes ceilingward. "What do you propose?" he asked through politely clenched teeth.

  "We gave them the Statue of Liberty. Let us demand it back."

  "Absurd!"

  "Then let us destroy it."

  "I understand that there are restive elements over there which have called for Liberty to be torn down and sold for scrap."

  "That would be an act of war!" Maurice Tourette cried. "If they dare to harm Liberty, we should nuke them flat. Stamp out their junk culture and its uncouth language at one blow."

  "I will have to speak with the minister of defense."

  "He is on my side," Tourette said quickly.

  "Have you spoken with him on this matter?"

  "Not yet. But I know he is on my side. If you wish to ensure your political future," the culture minister said, "you should be on my side, as well."

  "I will think about it," said the president of France, hanging up.

  Then the expected fax entered the room, attached to the hand of an aide, and the president of France leaned back to read it over.

  It was good, he considered, that the US. President was so indecisive. Between that and his own leisurely approach to this crisis, perhaps a solution would present itself before the minister of culture prodded both sides into something infinitely more dangerous than a war of words over words.

  Chapter 26

  Harold Smith knew he was onto something when a computer check of the Beasley credit-card airline-flights purchases started concentrating in three states, Florida, California and Louisiana.

  The first two he understood. Beasley employees. But there was no Beasley theme park in Louisiana. No corporate office, and no discernible connection to the Sam Beasley Corporation.

  They were all going to London. Why were they going to London? It was not to catch connecting flights to Paris and thus Euro Beasley, Smith deduced.

  First, no record of a massive block purchase of such connecting flights was showing up in any of the airline-reservations nets.