Lords of the Earth td-61 Read online

  "We can always reenter your name," the salesman said.

  At that point, realizing he was dealing with someone of little understanding, Chiun in his fairness made an offer to the salesman. If he would bring back Chiun's name, Chiun would buy the computer.

  "We can always reenter it," the salesman said. "But the old name's gone forever." He chuckled. "Names come and names go. Just like people. Heh, heh. Come and go."

  And thus it was that the salesman went. He had reached for the plug to disconnect the computer and Chiun, of course, could not let the computer that had failed leave with his name in it.

  That was the first unpleasantness of the day. The second was Remo's return, jumping to a conclusion that Chiun had somehow created a body for him to dispose of. Chiun hadn't created anything. He had suffered because of a computer that did not work. Chiun had suffered from having his name deleted. And the salesman had suffered from having his existence deleted. Having unintentionally hit one delete-key format, Chiun had hit another, the one located above the salesman's ear, at his temple. driving in a fingernail for a permanent delete.

  "I don't suppose you want to know what that man did to my name," said Chiun.

  "I don't care," Remo said. "He's your body, not mine."

  "I didn't think you would care for the truth," Chiun said. "After all, you don't care what happens to the glory of the House of Sinanju and you never have."

  "I'm not disposing of the body," said Remo.

  "Well, neither am I," said Chiun.

  Both of them heard the footsteps outside, the halting steps of a man whose unenlightened body was deteriorating in the common Western manner of old age. "Smith called. He will be here this afternoon," Chiun said.

  "This is the afternoon," Remo said.

  "And here he is," Chiun said. An elderly man, his face gaunt, his thinning hair white, walked up the creaky steps and knocked at the door.

  Remo answered it.

  "How did it go today?" asked Smith. "Did you get the hard disk and the backups?"

  "Hard disk and backups," said Remo. "Right. They've been taken care of."

  He shut the door behind Smith. Remo only knew that he had stayed young by noticing how old Smith had gotten during their years together, how the man's movements became restricted, how his steps had started their dissipation toward an inevitable shuffle.

  Remo wondered sometimes if this was because Smith had never learned to use his body properly or if it was the tension of his work that was crippling him. For almost twenty-five years, Smith had headed CURE, the secret agency whose mission was to fight America's enemies, inside or outside the law. Remo was the organization's killing arm, and it was his activities that the two unlucky computer executives had stumbled onto.

  Remo decided to make Smith feel better. "Everything's been taken care of," he said. "But you ought to get a new system for your computers. Everybody seems able to break into them these days."

  "We're taking care of that," Smith said, sinking gingerly into a chair: "We have, thank God, discovered a genius who'll set us up in such a way that you won't have to terminate any more poor souls who stumble onto our files. But we have other important problems facing us now."

  "We stand ready to serve, Emperor Smith," said Chiun. He refused to call the head of the secret organization anything but Emperor. Through the ages, Masters of Sinanju had always worked for royalty.

  Smith nodded but his face suddenly showed alarm. "What is that?" he asked Remo, pointing across the room.

  "Nothing," Remo said. "It's Chiun's."

  "That's a body," Smith said.

  "Right," Remo said. "It's Chiun's."

  Smith looked at Chiun, who said, "Would you like to purchase a computer?" Then, in Korean, he reminded Remo never to discuss family business in front of Smith.

  "We've got to get out of here," Smith said. "We can't be discovered by the police."

  "We'll move," Remo said. "It's a fresh body. We've got time."

  "I hope the police do come and they can take their foul, evil, deleting computer with them," said Chiun. He turned back to Smith, again smiling. "We commiserate with you and your problems and we are here to give glory to your name."

  Smith started to speak but could not take his eyes off the body. Remo and Chiun did not seem to mind it and he thought that perhaps it was the awesome skill with which these assassins worked that had made death cease to have real meaning for them. He did not know, and he realized, sadly, that it didn't matter. He no longer really cared about life and death that much himself.

  "So what's this big thing you want us to work on?" Remo said cheerily.

  Smith steadied himself and took a great breath of air.

  "Remo," he said, "what do you know about insects?"

  Chapter 3

  "Not yet, Mr. Perriweather," said the scientist.

  "Oh," said Waldron Perriweather III, disappointed.

  "Maybe in two weeks, sir."

  "Yes, of course. No sooner?"

  "I'm afraid not, sir."

  Perriweather sighed and took one more look into the microscope.

  "We need two more generations, sir. At least," the scientist said.

  "I see," said Perriweather. He was feeling dizzy. A sense of breathing difficulty filled his chest. There was that smell again, the one that always sent waves of nausea and fear through his body.

  The biologist was working with DDT again. Of course he had to. Perriweather walked past a window that allowed in only dim light through its fine mesh cover. Not even a fly's egg could fit through the glistening nylon mesh. Outside was air, good clean air. Perriweather threw two hands at the window and shoved.

  "No," screamed the scientist, diving at Perriweather and pulling him from the window. "What are you doing? Are you crazy?"

  "I need air."

  "Use the door," said the scientist. He helped his employer to his feet and dragged him toward the door.

  Outside the lab door, Perriweather leaned against a marble table imported from a czarist court. The biologist was surprised at how quickly Perriweather recovered.

  "I thought you were having a heart attack," he said.

  "No. It was the DDT."

  "There isn't enough in that room to harm a mouse," said the scientist. "It's amazing. I've never seen anybody as sensitive to it as you are. But you know I have to use it in this stage of the project. You understand that?"

  "I do," Perriweather said.

  "There's going to be more DDT and other toxins in this lab before we're through. That's if you want this carried out correctly."

  "I understand," Perriweather said. "You keep at it."

  "But one thing I will not go along with, can't go along with, is your ever opening a window in there," the scientist said. "They must be sealed."

  "Go ahead with your work. I understand," Perriweather said.

  "And once we achieve success, of course, we must put all our data into files and then destroy what we have created."

  Waldron Perriweather III shivered at the thought, but inwardly. He hid it well.

  "Of course," he said. He had to say that. The scientist would never have agreed to the project in the first place if Perriweather had not promised to destroy what was created.

  But he knew that the time would come when he would not need the biologist, and then, thought Perriweather, I will happily eat the rotting eyes out of your ugly head.

  He said, with a buzzing little smile, "You're doing a wonderful job."

  And then he was off for another press interview. The Species Liberation Alliance had struck again. The parents of a family of five had been strangled. Apparently they had not been the primary targets. The SLA had tried to gain access to a laboratory of the International Health Organization. Police had chased them until they had them trapped in a nearby farmhouse where they held the parents as hostages. They had delivered ten nonnegotiable demands to the police and when the demands weren't met, killed the farmer and his wife, while the children looked on. Then
they tried to shoot their way out through a police barricade. They wounded several state troopers but were stopped before they could hurl the concussion grenades they had been carrying. State police bullets nailed them in the front seat of the dead farmer's car.

  It was to this issue that Waldron Perriweather III addressed himself. The television reporter was sure that this time he had Perriweather.

  "I understand your position as America's leading spokesman for wildlife preservation," the reporter had said. "But how on earth can you defend, even remotely, the murder of parents in front of their children? People who didn't want anything but to live. They weren't polluting the atmosphere. As a matter of fact, the SLA murdered an organic farmer. He didn't even use pesticides. What do you say to that?"

  Perriweather's smooth face appeared as unruffled as if his eyes had alighted on a large chocolate cake.

  "I would like here and now to protest the use of automatic weapons by the state police. It was an excessive display of force, considering that the SLA used only small revolvers. Where is this country going when police feel free to fire automatic weapons at civilians?"

  "They were murderers," the reporter said.

  "Who found them guilty? Did they have a trial by jury? No. Their judge and jury was the barrel of an M-16. And what were they trying to do, these two who never had a chance for a fair trial? They were trying to say: 'Look. We are not the only ones on earth. Live and let live. We are not the only creatures in the world.' And for that, they fell, before extraordinary force."

  "What about the farmer and his wife? What about the children who are now orphans? What about the police who were wounded?"

  "To eradicate so-called terrorism, you must deal with its causes. You will never stop the just and legitimate aspirations of those who care for a just and legitimate new order for all creatures, not only those with the power to get themselves represented and heard, but the powerless also, those creatures who are considered unworthy of living by those who deal death in DDT and other killer toxins."

  What bothered the reporter most was that this malicious absurdity would probably be supported on college campuses around the country. The police were going to be put on trial in the media, after stopping two murderers from killing again.

  In Washington, the chief of a special FBI detail that had been assigned to protect the laboratories of the International Health, Agricultural and Educational Organization, watched the interview with Perriweather in helpless fury. Hours before, he had been told that his bureau was being relieved of its reponsibility to protect the IHAEO lab.

  "We had terrorists attack the lab today. They didn't get in because we were there," said the unit chief. "So why are we being relieved?"

  "Orders," he was told by the supervisor, who had a corner office in the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

  "But that's ridiculous. We stopped them. That's why they went at the farmer and his family. We prevented them from entering the lab. Us. No other nation has been able to do that."

  "I know," said the supervisor. "But orders are orders. Your unit's relieved."

  The IHAEO lab had been one of the great intelligence mysteries of the last decade. It was one of the few actually productive parts of the IHAEO, doing international research against crop-destroying insects. Yet the lab was the only part of the IHAEO that had ever been attacked.

  This was doubly strange because the lab was the single element of the IHAEO that all nations, rich and poor, communist and capitalist, supported. In fact, the lab had represented what everyone admitted was the only absolutely unassailable good work ever done by the IHAEO.

  But over the past decade, the lab had come under repeated physical attack. Scientists were kidnapped, killed, threatened, mutilated and bombed. From one country to another, no matter where the laboratory had been established, scientists were targets.

  Secretly, the security forces of many nations had begun what had been their most cooperative effort ever. The lab had started in Ubanga, a developing African country whose major crops suffered vast insect damage. But when IHAEO scientists started to disappear in the crocodile-infested waters, Ubanga swallowed its pride and admitted it could no longer protect the guest scientists. Reluctantly it gave up its host-nation status to Great Britain. The British assigned their crack SAS teams to protect the researchers, under a network especially labeled MI26.

  Within four days after the move to England, a toxin expert was found near the hearth in his new Sussex home with his eyes shot out. After another such incident, the British swallowed their pride, and asked the French to take over. The lab moved to Paris, where, even before the centrifuges could be plugged in, the whole place went up in flames.

  At the request of all its members, the lab was moved to the most efficient police state in the world. It was set up in the heart of Moscow and given to the KGB to protect for all mankind.

  With constant surveillance and the right to arrest anyone who came anywhere near the lab, the KGB was able to keep the scientists safe, albeit unhappy. For three months. And then a botanist was found clawed to death inside a locked room.

  The Russians turned the laboratory over to the United States, and the FBI, using the world's most advanced technology, had kept it safe for four months. Even today, when it had repelled the SLA attack.

  And yet the FBI was being relieved of the job and the unit chief wanted to know why. The terrorists hadn't gotten through the final beam barrier and the scientists were still alive. All of them. There was even a lead now on who might be behind the mysterious assaults against the researchers. So why was the FBI being removed? The unit chief demanded to know.

  "I'm just following orders. This comes from the highest."

  "The director has gone crazy then," the unit chief said.

  "Higher," said the supervisor.

  "Then the attorney general has gone wacky too."

  "The AG doesn't agree with the decision either," the supervisor said.

  The unit chief was about to curse political decisions when he suddenly realized that it didn't make sense. Obviously someone close to the President, or even the President himself, had made this decision. But if it had been made for political motives, it was a mistake. Even the White House could have seen that. Here was America accomplishing something that no other nation had been able to do. That lesson wouldn't have been lost on the world, and the White House had to know that. But still the FBI unit was being called off.

  The unit chief was almost tempted to give the story to the press. Almost. But he had served loyally for too many years and he distrusted a press that could go into a situation, create disasters and then, as if free of guilt or responsibility, go on with the same exhortations that had created the disasters in the first place.

  He contented himself with saying, "It's crazy."

  "They're orders," replied his supervisor. "We did a good job. Nobody can take that away from us and we will continue to investigate the SLA. I think there's something bigger behind this thing and I hope someone will get them."

  "We stopped an attack. Why were we taken off?"

  "I guess someone else is going to take over our job," the supervisor said.

  "Great. Who? I'll pass on what we know."

  "I have no idea."

  "CIA?"

  "No," the supervisor said. "Since Peanut Brain, they'll never be allowed to work inside America again."

  "Then who?"

  "Nobody knows. And I mean nobody," said the supervisor.

  "If it's not us and not the CIA and it wasn't the KGB or the Deuxieme or MI-26, then in God's name, who?"

  "Welcome to IHAEO labs, Washington," said Dara Worthington. She wondered whether she dared make friends with these two. She had lost so many friends at IHAEO already. At first she thought that she would show them to their private lab and then flee. But the elderly man was so sweet and gentle that she just had to say something about the adorable shining green kimono he wore.

  "It's beautiful," she said.

  "You
gotta start that stuff?" said the Oriental's white partner cruelly. His name was Remo. He was incredibly sexy, the kind of man she dreamed of bedding, but he had a rude personality that she didn't care for. It was a detached coldness, a casual lack of caring. When she had greeted him with a warm hello, he had ignored her. She didn't need that. She knew she was beautiful, with glorious red hair and a body many men had told her they would die for. Not that she wanted anyone dead. There had been too much of that around these labs already. But at least when she gave someone a big warm hello, she should get something back, like a little interest.

  "Just show us the lab and the other researchers," the one called Remo had said. She ignored him and talked to the elderly Oriental who was so pleasant.

  "And don't lose anything of his in a computer," Remo told her.

  "Does he always talk to you like that?" Dara had asked.

  "It's all right," said Chiun. He was not only sweet and understanding, thought Dara, but he had a nice name too.

  "I'm serious about not playing with his computer," Remo said loudly.

  "A computer caused me a problem," Chiun told her. "Since then I have been blamed for its failure."

  "That doesn't sound fair," Dara said.

  "We have worked together for many years now, I and this white thing," the Oriental said sadly. "I do not seek fairness anymore."

  "Just don't play with his computer," Remo said, "or you'll really see unfairness."

  "You don't have to be so rude," Dara told him.

  "Yes, I do," Remo said.

  "Why?"

  "Because if I weren't rude, you might play with his computer."

  Dara let that go but she couldn't let Remo criticize the old man for accepting a compliment on his beautiful kimono.

  "I have known you two for just a few minutes, but frankly, I will be blunt," she said.

  "Don't bother," Remo said.

  "I will. I intend to," she said.

  "I thought so," Remo said.

  "I don't know why this lovely man puts up with you," she said.

  "Are you through?" Remo asked.

  "Yes."

  "Good. Now show us the lab."

  "We learn to live with these things," Chiun told her sadly. "Do you know I have to take out the garbage myself?"