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"No," said Remo, adding his clearance card to the other cards and plastic
face-picture badges. He brought a handful of identifications back to the
technician. The technician looked at the identifications and gasped at one of
them.
"Gracious. You've got a staff officer in there."
"One of them," said Remo. "There is an intelligence guy there, too."
"Yes. Quite. So. I see," said the technician, giving back the identifications.
Remo pocketed them in case he might need them again. "What would you like?"
asked the technician.
"Who are you?"
"I am a technician from Pomfritt Laboratories of London," said the
technician.
"What are you doing here? Precisely. What's going on?"
The man launched himself into a detailed explanation of fluorocarbon and the
power of the sun, and the harnessing of the unfiltered rays of the sun and
finding out in a "controlled"-he stressed "controlled "-atmosphere just what
mankind could do with the sun's full power.
"Burn ourselves to cinders," said Remo, who understood perhaps half of what
the technician was talking about. "Okay, what is doing it, and where is it?"
"A controlled fluorocarbon beam generator."
"Good," said Remo. "Where is that fluorocarbon ... thing?"
"At its base."
"Right. Where?" said Remo.
"I'm not sure, but as you can see, this experiment is marvelously controlled,"
said the technician. He gave his wristwatch a little tap again to get it
going. It didn't.
"Why aren't you sure?" asked Remo.
"Because it's not our product. We're just testing it."
"Good. For whom?"
The technician gave Remo a name and an address. It was in America. This
confirmed some of the data he had gotten from the intelligence people in the
car. He returned to the car and asked for the telephone.
The number rang. Remo held the black telephone attached to a unit in the front
of the car. He stood outside the driver's window. When he heard the crisp
"Yes" from Smith, Remo said:
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"I am still on an open line."
"Go ahead," said Smith. "What do you have?"
"I found the source of that thing that opens up the ozone layer."
"Good. Where?"
Remo gave him the name and address of the firm in America. "Do you want me to
return and close in on them? Or do you want to do it yourself? You're there in
America."
"Hold on," said Smith.
Remo smiled at the group of men in the back of the car. The colonel glowered
back. The intelligence officer stared ahead glumly. In the field, the lab
technicians were comparing watches. Remo whistled as he waited for Smith.
"Okay," said Smith.
"Do you want to handle it there, or do we have enough time for me to fly back
and do it right?"
"I want you to keep looking, Remo. Not only is there no such company as
Sunorama of Buttesville, Arkansas, but there isn't even a Buttesville,
Arkansas."
Remo returned to the laboratory technician and offered to fix the man's watch
by running it through his ears and out through his nose if he didn't tell the
truth.
"That's the name we have. We're participating in the experiment for Dr.
O'Donnell. It's her company. That was the name she gave. Really."
Remo tended to believe the man. Most people told the truth when their dorsal
root ganglion was compressed painfully into the sensory neuron along the
spinal cord. Sometimes they would cry. Sometimes they would yell. But they
always told the truth. This lab technician opened his mouth to yell when Remo
allowed the pain to subside and thus enabled him to talk.
"Fine," said Remo. "Where is Dr. O'Donnell?"
"She left with a Russian-speaking guy," said the technician.
Remo noticed at that very moment that there were no British bobbies on the
scene, no protection around this field that the intelligence personnel of
America's ally had tried to keep hidden from America. Who was on whose side,
and who was the Russian?
Chapter 4
Harold W. Smith calculated, on a small old-fashioned piece of white paper, a
line going up signaling reports of new missile sites in the Soviet Union. Also
going up was the possibility of a rupture in the ozone shield that might not
be closed.
It was a race as to which would destroy them all first. And Smith could only
handle one line at a time. He had Remo.
If he had Chiun, he could launch the aged assassin into Russia, a good place
for him. For some strange reason, Chiun seemed to be able to predict the
Russians quite well. Chiun also seemed to be able to communicate with anyone,
perhaps a necessity for a member of a house of assassins that had been around
for thousands of years.
Under a secret agreement, Smith was not only allowed to send in gold by
submarine, but he was able to contact Pyongyang when Chiun returned. Yet even
that had changed.
Smith briefly wondered if the change had something to do with the Russian
response. Even though the North Koreans were their closest ally in the world,
the Russians did not trust them. They looked upon them as some poor cousins,
an international embarrassment they were forced to endure. It was not even
much of a secret. Almost every intelligence agency in the world had monitored
the pleas of North Korea seeking Russian respect.
Few people knew it at the time, least of all Smith in his Folcroft
headquarters on Long Island Sound, monitoring the approaching destruction of
the world, but the President for Life of North Korea had left the moment the
Master of Sinanju landed. He had done it on the assurance that it would be
best for him to be out of the country when the Master of Sinanju found out
what had happened in his village.
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The district colonel who followed a full twenty paces behind the Master of
Sinanju did not know what his superiors planned, either. He was told only not
to provoke the Master of Sinanju. No one was to address the Master unless
spoken to.
The Master had landed and walked through the honor guard, as though they
blocked his way in some line, right through to the waiting limousine. He was
immediately driven to the village of Sinanju. The colonel, like all security
officers, could not enter. This village, alone among all places in North
Korea, was allowed to keep its old ways. It paid no taxes, and once a year an
American submarine was permitted to land in Sinanju and off-load cargo. Of
this irregularity, the colonel knew only that it was not a spy mission and
that he was not to interfere. The business of Sinanju was the business of
Sinanju, he had been told, and was not the concern of Pyongyang. The Master of
Sinanju would look after his village. And now that fabled entity, this Master
of Sinanju, had returned to Korea because of something worse than a disgrace.
A tragedy.
The colonel had been ordered to grant this frail old man's every wish. His
superior, General Toksa, told him to report those wishes to himself, and the
colonel knew that the general was to report the same to Himself, President for
Life, Kim Il Sung. The colonel shivered a moment at the thought of his
responsibility.
Not everyone reacted that way. As they walked through the airport, youngsters
laughed at the strange kimono worn by the Master of Sinanju. Even a state
security officer burst out laughing.
The Master of Sinanju spoke for the first time, using a term outlawed for
forty years:
"Japanese kissers," he spat. It was an epithet dating from the time of the
Japanese occupation. Many secret tales survived about Koreans who had
collaborated with the hated Japanese. When the colonel had taken over the
northwest province, which included Sinanju, he had heard that the Japanese
never dared to enter Sinanju, and that before, when China occupied Korea, the
Chinese never entered Sinanju. But it was whispered that in times past, the
throne of the White Chrysanthemum in Japan and all the dynasties of China had [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]