Deadly Genes td-117 Read online

  Remo paused at the top of the brick wall. When he looked back through the hole, he saw the rear of the building give way. The entire row of windows, the bricks and Dr. Judith White tumbled out together. Moments later, they crashed into the rocks of the Chelsea Creek rapids.

  "This is no time for sight-seeing," Chiun snapped. "If you get injured again, you may tend to your own wounds."

  Whirling, the old Asian bounded along the length of the brick wall, unmindful of the sheer drop to the woods below. Fire erupted through holes in the broad flat roof.

  Remo raced after him to the main warehouse. As he sprang over to the largest part of the building, the rest of the office wing behind him collapsed onto the floating figure of Dr. Judith White. Her battered carcass vanished beneath a ton of bricks and burning wood.

  Chapter 32

  Dr. Judith White's body turned up five days later. "It washed up on Deer Island," Smith explained to Remo over the phone. "Her name tag from BostonBio was in her pocket, as well as a few credit cards."

  "They're sure it's her?" Remo asked. He was sitting on the floor in his living room.

  The Master of Sinanju sat on a simple reed mat across from him. Chiun's parchments were laid out carefully at his knees. A quill danced in his bony hand as he sketched Korean characters.

  "The coroner says that her arm was wrenched off with what they are terming 'inhuman strength,'" Smith said dryly. "I doubt it is necessary to go much further than that."

  "What about the other hand? Did you check fingerprints?" Remo asked suspiciously.

  "Unfortunately, Dr. White never had prints taken," Smith said slowly.

  "At a high-tech joint like BostonBio?" Remo asked.

  "It is not part of their normal procedure," Smith explained. "And anyway, they did not regard her as a security risk."

  Remo snorted derisively at this. "What about dental records?" he asked.

  Smith was growing concerned now, as well. "Her face was mangled in the fall. The teeth were shattered. What are you getting at, Remo?" he asked. "You do not believe she could have escaped?"

  "I guess not, Smitty," he admitted reluctantly. "It's just she was awfully resilient."

  "Not this resilient," Smith stated firmly. "The genetic formulas of BostonBio died with her. The BGSBS material confiscated from BostonBio that detailed the so-called Feinberg Method has been destroyed. No one will be able to duplicate the formula. Nor, I suspect, will anyone want to."

  "Amen to that," Remo echoed. "What I can't figure out is why she was so fired up to help out humanity."

  "What do you mean?" Smith asked.

  "That was the point of the whole BBQ project," Remo reminded him.

  "I didn't tell you?" Smith said, surprised.

  "Tell me what?"

  "An autopsy was performed on one of the animals Dr. White brought back to BostonBio. There was a deliberate destructive code buried in the DNA of the animals."

  Remo blinked. "Are you saying the BBQs really would have killed people?"

  Across the room, Chiun's head snapped up. Remo shot a glance at his teacher.

  "Worse," Smith intoned gravely. "She heralded them as the cure for world hunger. However, that was not their only purpose. Dr. White's cure would have turned mankind into creatures like her. The genetic code contained in the animals was a variant of the old Feinberg bacteria formula. If consumed, the meat of the Bos camelus-whitus would have transformed people into things like her. If enough meat was eaten, the change over time would have been permanent."

  "So we saved the human race one giant step back down the evolutionary ladder," Remo said. One eye was trained on the Master of Sinanju.

  Finding nothing of interest in Smith's explanation, the old man had returned to his writing.

  "I had the remaining creature at BostonBio destroyed," the CURE director said. "Since you eliminated the ones in the possession of HETA, every loose end should be tied up."

  "Me?" Remo frowned. "I thought you did it." Smith's voice was level.

  "Are you joking?" he asked.

  "No," Remo insisted. "I told you where they were. I figured you'd take care of them. I said I wasn't going to kill them, Smitty."

  "Yes, but surely under the circumstances..." Smith paused, thinking. "It has been several days since you left Medford," he said, his tone reasonable. "With no one to take care of them, perhaps the animals have died already."

  "If you do send someone out there, you might want to check the toolshed in the barn," Remo suggested, thinking of Mona and Huey Janner. "And make sure they don't get within sniffing distance when they crack the door."

  "Why?" Smith asked.

  But Remo had already hung up the phone. "What's your problem?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju once he'd dropped the phone in its cradle.

  "Besides you?" Chiun asked aridly. He didn't look up from his work.

  "Ha-ha," Remo said. "You acted like you'd been gut-stabbed when I said the BBQs could kill people."

  "A Master of Sinanju cannot be stabbed. Oh, the clumsiest of us has been known on occasion to be mauled by feral kittens, as has been noted in the annals of the House, but stabbed? Never."

  "Judith White was no kitten, Little Father," Remo said.

  "Perhaps," Chiun replied vaguely.

  He wrote for a few long minutes, quill prancing merrily as his knotted hand traced perfect lines. Remo stared at the top of his bowed head the entire time.

  As the time wore on, Chiun grew more annoyed. Though he tried to mask it, the quivering tufts of hair above his ears belied his increasing agitation.

  At the point when the old Asian could take it no longer, Remo spoke.

  "You boxed one of them up and shipped it back to Sinanju somehow, didn't you?"

  The shock on Chiun's face faded the instant he glanced up at Remo. He saw that his pupil was only guessing.

  "Pah, leave me," he spit, turning back to his scrolls. "You are interrupting my train of thought. I was just at the point in the history where the kitten trapped the foolish assassin in a burning building." He waved a dismissive hand.

  Remo got to his feet. He began walking slowly to the hall. In the doorway, he paused.

  "You know, Chiun, between the BBQs and this mysterious movie deal of yours, you're building up a lot of secrets lately," Remo warned. "You just better hope Smith doesn't find out."

  "Smith knows only that which I tell him," Chiun said with indifferent confidence.

  "If you say so," Remo replied. "Just don't say I didn't warn you."

  Chiun looked up in time to see his pupil leave the room. His aged face puckered in displeasure. Remo could be so irritating at times.

  The old Korean returned to his work. On the paper, he wrote the Korean symbol for ingrate. Although it wasn't much, the mark did help to ease a bit of his great burden of suffering. But only a bit.

  EPILOGUE

  In a few short weeks, the gruesome murders in Boston passed into the realm of local folklore. Dr. Judith White joined the ranks of the Boston Strangler and Lizzie Borden as citizens of the Hub and surrounding Essex, Middlesex and Norfolk Counties vied to outdo one another over the backyard fence with tales of how they had almost encountered the "killer doctor." Around the rest of the nation, things returned to normal.

  In a small room in a strip motel in rural North Dakota-away from all the idle gossip-a lone figure looked critically at herself in the long bathroom-door mirror. She had requested the room farthest away from the office. It offered the kind of privacy she liked.

  She had ordered dinner not long before and didn't want to be disturbed while she was eating. The human predilection for rudeness was one of the things about them she most despised.

  Judith White examined the sprouting mound of pink flesh at her shoulder. At the moment, it was as large as a baby's arm and hand, but that would change quickly enough.

  She considered herself lucky to have had the foresight to include starfish DNA in her new genetic code. The sea creatures were able to regenerate p
arts that had been torn off. Now she could, as well.

  Hers had been a daring plan. One that involved great personal risk. But it had worked. She hadn't been followed. The world thought that Dr. Judith White was dead. She would allow mankind that small luxury. For now.

  She flexed and opened the small hand. It was important for its growth that she exercise the new limb. How long it would take to mature, she had no clear idea. But so far, eating seemed to help its growth spurts.

  As she wiggled her tiny pink fingers, she heard a car slow down outside her motel room. Rapid feet ran across the gravel drive. All at once, there came a sharp knock at the door.

  "Pepe's Pizza!" a harried young voice called from outside. A cold wind rattled the motel windows.

  She draped a robe over her shoulder, covering her tiny baby arm. Judith stepped from the bathroom. It was time for Judith White to feed. And she had no intention of having pizza for supper.

  With the purpose of a hungry feline, she stalked over to the closed motel door, purring gently.

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