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  When the call was completed, Dr. Harold Smith, director of Folcroft and director of CURE, heard the line buzz. Then the receiver was lifted.

  "Hello," Smith said. "Vacation's over."

  On the other end of the phone, fifteen hundred miles away, in a Caribbean hotel room, Remo Williams felt very, very good. Vacations were boring. It would be good to work again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Harris Feinstein was buried before the Lord God of Israel, King of the Universe and the leading citizens of San Aquino. Most citizens of San Aquino wondered why the casket was not opened.

  Presumably, the King of the Universe knew.

  So did Sheriff Wade Wyatt and Lester Curpwell IV.

  The rabbi, a man of fine sensitive features who had just been graduated from the seminary, somehow or other got the Vietnamese war into Harris Feinstein's death.

  Mrs. Feinstein shot him a dirty look. The rabbi ignored her. Sheriff Wyatt shot everyone a dirty look. Everyone ignored him. Les Curpwell stood with his head bowed.

  Wyatt kept looking around to see if he could spot anyone he knew, maybe wanted on a charge of something or other. He didn't.

  The rabbi defined what a good man meant. He defined what a good life was. He defined what thousands of years of study had decided was a good life and a good death.

  Sheriff Wyatt thought that sounded okay, depending on how you interpreted the rabbi's sentiments.

  In the last calling to the creator of all that is, was, and ever will be. The Shalom Cemetery into the clear California sky. Its ancient, vibrant cadences were part of the meaning of the Universe.

  And the ground everyone stood on most certainly would have done proud the scribes of the Old Testament. The ground they stood on was preparing- unless someone could be stopped-to give up the dead buried therein, and to cast into the Pacific Ocean multitudes upon multitudes of people, to bury cities alive, to crush millions, to lay waste human and animal life as only an earth upheaval could do.

  If a scribe with a knowing historical eye had been at the Feinstein funeral, he might have written:

  "And thus the elder Feinstein of two score and fourteen years was put to ground. And around him were his friends and family. And they did not know what the earth had stored for them, neither did they know the birds of the trees, or the moles of the ground who knew the tremors of the earth.

  "Men slept with women to whom marriage was not given and young women freely of themselves gave. Gluttony was upon the land, and men in leisure would not walk but sat on cushioned chairs, their comfort to bestow.

  "Men with men did intercourse conduct and women in all unclean things, then did the people of this land indulge. Brother against brother took up arms, poor against rich, black against white, Gentile and Hebrew alike did nourish these hatreds in their souls.

  "And none looked to the Lord God of all mankind whose sweetness had brought such bounty. None looked, for even their cemeteries told them that this world and the next was for their comfort alone.

  "Only some voices warned: 'Repent, repent, repent.' But they were scorned and rebuked for their truth and driven from there with oaths and profanities."

  "Get those fucking coocoos outa this here funeral. Jesus Christ, can't those dingaling dingbats see there's a fucking funeral going on here."

  Thus bespake Sheriff Wyatt.

  Thus to the cemetery gate were five young hippies escorted by deputies.

  The funeral services stopped. Everyone stared at Sheriff Wyatt.

  "Sorry," he said, grinning sheepishly and removing his Stetson. "I guess I talked a bit loud. Oh. Sorry again. The hat stays on. Heh, heh."

  It was not announced at the funeral, but a man named Remo something-or-other had purchased, through an agent, the Feinstein Department Store. The Feinstein home also had been sold to him, but what his name was, Mrs. Feinstein didn't remember. Mrs. Feinstein was leaving San Aquino that day, because with her daughters married and now Harris gone, there were just too many good memories to see each day and her heart could not sustain her sweet bitterness.

  At about the time the late Harris Feinstein's friends were discovering his store had been sold, its new owner was discovering what he had bought.

  "A department store? Are you out of your head? I don't know anything about department stores."

  Remo drummed his fingers lightly on the sun-heated dashboard of the rented car. He did not look at Dr. Harold W. Smith but stared straight ahead at the neat, manicured valley baking in the hot Los Angeles, California and had put his one valise in the trunk of the car Smith had rented. Chiun was being driven in a hired limousine behind them, barely big enough for his steamer trunks, television sets and taping devices.

  "You don't need to know anything about department stores. The manager has been told to continue running the store until you are ready to get involved in its operation. Say, in two or three months. You'll have plenty of time. More than you need, since the plan is rather simple."

  "It always is with my life."

  "As you know, San Aquino has been asked to pay earthquake insurance, $8,000 a month. You are assuming Feinstein's position in the town. You'll be asked to participate. Play it by ear from then on, but try to give the earthquake people some grief. And when they come after you. . . ." He didn't finish the sentence. Instead, he said: "This could easily and quickly become a national catastrophe. If the earthquake people decide to branch out. Or if something annoys them and they trigger a major earthquake. It could be the greatest tragedy in our history."

  "Second greatest," Remo said.

  "What's the first?"

  "When man came down out of the trees," said Remo Williams.

  "Be serious. Why do you think we sent you that geology tutor? We've been watching this thing for a couple of months. And we haven't been able to get a handle on who or what. And now, with Feinstein and McAndrew dead, it makes it a different ball-game. The earthquake people will kill."

  "How do you know there really is somebody behind this?" Remo said. "Maybe a coincidence."

  "No," Smith said. "The earthquake frequencies are off all over the State These people can cause quakes and they can prevent them. And that makes them dangerous. Too dangerous to live."

  "You have great faith in my success."

  "How much did you absorb about geology?," Smith asked.

  "Not much," Remo said.

  "Well, there's an outfit in this county called the Richter Institute. It's headed by a man named Dr. Silas Forben. They call him "Dr. Quake." He's had a screw loose for a couple of years but he probably knows more about earthquakes than any other man alive. McAndrew and Feinstein were planning to see him. If you need to know anything about quakes, ask him."

  "Maybe he's the earthquake maker?," Remo said.

  "Maybe," Smith said. He did not sound convinced. "Keep me posted on what you find out. It may be that we'll want to send geologists out here, if it's something scientific. And you may have to take care of them, too, when they're done with their work."

  "You never change, Dr. Smith."

  "You're not exactly an innocent yourself, Remo."

  "I never asked for this job. I was framed for murder, remember. I was electrocuted, damn near, remember. And I woke up in your neat little organization with the sonofabitch who framed me telling me America was worth a life. It was. His. Remember? I know the business. And I know you're a sonofabitch. And I know I'm a sonofabitch. It doesn't bother you, but it does bother me."

  Remo stared straight ahead into the blooming California countryside, only he did not see the countryside. He stared into his hate.

  "Chiun was supposed to work on that with you," said Smith.

  "He didn't succeed. I'm an American."

  "Well."

  "Well, not your kind, obviously."

  "I'm sorry," Smith said. "You're very good at what you do."

  "That's the first compliment you've ever given me and I find it repulsive."

  Soon, Smith reached a ranchhouse with a spraw
ling lawn, circular driveway and lovely Grecian pottery at the door. Cars were parked in the driveway. By the people standing around on the lawn with drinks in their hands, it looked as if a party were in progress.

  "The funeral was supposed to be yesterday," Smith said.

  "You mentioned something about lungs being forced out through the mouth?"

  "A pressure killing," Smith said.

  Remo found that very interesting. Then something dawned on him. "Why yesterday for the funeral? Why so soon?"

  "Jews bury within twenty-four hours. I guess he was too badly mangled. Might have taken the coroner too long to determine the cause of death. Newspapers called it a case of accidental poisoning, so that is what you're supposed to believe. Oh, by the way," he said, slipping Remo a wallet that appeared worn but which Remo knew wasn't ever really used, lest it contain some trace, some small trace of where it had been before, "You're Remo Blomberg. You want to enter the department store business-retail, they call it."

  "Your parents died young leaving you lots of money. You were raised by an Aunt Ethel in Miami Beach. You know the area a bit. Don't give your aunt's name and address. Just say you have an aunt. Don't worry about not going to temple or kosher eating habits. You're a Reformed Jew. Whenever someone asks you for a donation, give, and no one will know you're not a Jew."

  "I knew an Israeli agent once. Briefly."

  "Different culture. Forget it."

  Smith pulled into the driveway, and almost as if it were on signal, the people began to leave. "I guess they stopped here for a farewell drink," Smith said. 'The house is yours and so's the store. Both paid in full. It's getting late and I'm going to have to leave. Here comes Chiun."

  Smith stopped in front of the house and the rented limousine pulled up behind them. The driver jumped out and opened the back door for a frail Oriental in flowing green robes. He helped the elderly man to the front steps. Chiun thanked him politely. He took Chiun's three trunks from the back of the limousine and lugged them to the sidewalk, along with Chiun's television equipment. The driver motioned that Chiun might, if he wished, sit on the trunks. He helped the elderly man to sit down.

  Remo shook his head. Chiun was playing helpless again. Chiun often did this to get people to carry his luggage or haul things from place to place. He did not bother to inform those who did the hauling that he could twist them like soft candy if he felt like it. Nor did he inform them that he was the Master of Sinan-ju, before whom all men were merely targets in motion.

  Once when a woman was carrying Chiun's shopping packages and had lost the key to her locked car, Chiun had pressured the metal handle open. He explained that it had really been unlocked. But it took the garage a week to get another lock to replace the one Chiun had mangled.

  Now Chiun again was in the late afternoon sun of a California summer. He probably expected to be carried into the house.

  Smith looked at his watch again and Remo removed his single valise from the back seat and hopped out of the car. As he turned, he saw that Chiun was no longer sitting on his trunks. He was in the driveway commiserating with a woman dressed all in black and he was bowing mournfully.

  Remo looked up at the neat manicured lawn, and the people now leaving and wondered suddenly why people mourned death as if it were an accident befalling the unlucky, when every one of them would suffer the same inevitable fate.

  And for these people, it could be soon, depending on how successful Remo was at his job. He saw seven dark birds take off from a popular tree in the distance, as though frightened by a cat. For all he knew that could be another low tremor. Birds could feel the tremors best.

  How many earthquakes a year did California have? Little earth tremors. Little adjustments of the forces of the crust of the earth. Like bugs in a bottle that kids would cap, and maybe they'd remember to let in air. Maybe the little bugs would live.

  They were all bugs in the bottle, only now the problem wasn't air. Someone was going to smash the bottle under foot. With all the human bugs in it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The well built homes were not damaged that night. Only the chandeliers swayed slightly. Barefoot, Remo could not feel it on the stone floor of the living room. Neither did Chiun stir and he slept on a mat on the floor of his bedroom.

  Out across the lawn a cat howled, Remo looked to the blue-black sky with its lost moon, feeling very alone and very helpless, frightened to a degree that he had never felt since his training with Chiun had begun.

  So he closed his eyes, closed his mind and for a moment was silent. When he opened his eyes he was calm again. An over active mind is a dagger in one's own heart was an old saying from the Korean village of Sinanju whence the master came.

  Other homes were not so safe that night. They were not strong, they were not solid, they boasted no plumbing or air conditioning or central heating.

  They were the homes of the grape pickers, the people who came to San Aquino in the spring and summer to work the vineyards, then who left after the late season harvest. Aquino grapes were good grapes, vermouth grapes for America's leading vermouth.

  So while the owners of the vineyards did not really feel the quake that night, the pickers did. For the tremor that could sway a chandelier could collapse a sheet metal wall or sever a two-by-four nailed to another two-by-four that was supposed to hold up a roof.

  Three shacks came down in the San Aquino night like houses of cards.

  Bare light bulbs flicked on in the standing shacks. People in nightgowns and underdrawers, some in slacks and nothing else fled from their shacks, shrieking.

  Lung-choking dust rose from the collection of tin and wooden rubble.

  Someone yelled in Spanish.

  "Men. We need men. Help."

  A fat, bloodied hand reached its way out from under a splintered beam and in Spanish, a weak voice called from the direction of the hand: "Please. Please."

  "Here. Help me with this beam," yelled one man in slacks and bare feet. It was cool, but his body was soaked wet as he struggled to lift a beam off the fat, moving arm with the bloodied hand.

  From one pile of sheet metal and wood and tarpaper came a baby's cry.

  It cried as men peeled off strips of housing with their hands. It cried when the cranes and tractors arrived from the town of San Aquino. No one standing around the shacks could stop it or pick it up or comfort it, and the men working to untangle the pile felt helpless, afraid and angry at the building that did not yield fast enough and the child they could not find fast enough.

  In the middle of the night, the crying stopped and when the dead baby's body was discovered in a little while later and laid onto a table-the grape pickers of San Aquino returned to their shacks in silence.

  And they did not go to the fields the next day, although the sun was high and hot, and in the words of generations of migrants, it was "weather to work."

  "Jeez," mumbled Sheriff Wade Wyatt. "Spooky wetback labour. Anything'!! spook 'em."

  He had arrived on the scene in the morning, having discovered by telephone the previous night that no white men had been killed and having therefore returned to sleep.

  "Won't go to the fields, huh?," asked Wyatt of the owner of the Gromucci ranch. "Shoot. You think it's the Commies stirring them up?"

  "No," said Robert Gromucci, the owner. Gromucci leaned from the window of his pink Eldorado convertible and looked up to Sheriff Wyatt taking notes.

  "Seven people were killed last night," Gromucci said.

  "All greasers though-right?"

  "All Mexican-Americans."

  "Seven. The shacks went?"

  "Your deputy has the report."

  "Yeah, sure. I just wanted to get some of the details of the quake."

  "The workers are restless today," Gromucci said.

  "In the old days we knew how to handle that, Bob, but I can't do anything for you today. You know my hands are tied."

  "I wasn't asking you to work them over, Wade. They're talking about this being the
year of the big curse or something. The gods of the earth versus the gods of destruction. I don't know."

  "I thought you people believed in that stuff too, Bob. No offense."

  "We don't. You look unusually content this morning, Wade."

  Which was true. Wade Wyatt had warned the San Aquino committee-Curpwell and Rueker and Boy-denhousen-that the quake would be coming. Reprisal for Feinstein's trip to Washington. Reprisal for Washington sending in McAndrew. Warning not to make any more trips or to welcome any more federal men.

  "No, no more than usual, Bob," Wyatt said. "It's just that good old, uneducated hick, redneck Wade Wyatt isn't always wrong, you know, and sometimes he has a right to gloat."

  "Seven people are dead, Wade."

  "So, hire others. I'll see you, Bob. Take care. Regards to the missus," yelled Wyatt, trotting backwards as he talked.

  He entered his star-studded Plymouth and wheeled the vehicle onto the dusty road out of the camp and to the highway which was coming alive with the morning San Aquino traffic.

  Wyatt whistled pleasantly as he drove down the mountain highway, past the Cowboy Motel, with its occupants entering their cars, many without luggage. Then past the string of used-car lots and car washes, and then the Aquino shopping center dominated by the Feinstein Department store.

  He wondered if the new owner would change the name of the store to Blomberg's. Or maybe Remo's. The guy seemed regular enough but one could never tell with those kind of people. Take his Oriental servant, for instance. It was real obvious the man was no servant. He didn't have enough energy to even take his bags into the house. Sheriff Wyatt, who had driven up to the house, had ordered his deputy to do that.

  Come to think of it, the new owner was obviously as queer as a pink banana. Why else have that old Oriental there? He was no servant. Too weak. Probably be dead in a month.

  Could those little gooks be beating us in Vietnam? No. Sheriff Wyatt knew who was beating America in Nam. America was beating America in Nam.

  But Sheriff Wyatt was a politician too. And as he pulled into the diner near the Curpwell building, he vowed that like his feelings on Vietnam and who was really responsible, he would keep his feelings about Remo Blomberg to himself. Bottled up.