Deadly Seeds

by Warren Murphy

  It wasn’t worth it. How could he explain Force X to Sally who thought a Western attack meant one from Los Angeles and an Eastern attack meant New York City?

  How to tell him about the computer printouts, gathering all the information on arrests and convictions and crooked politicians bagged, and how the computers had confirmed the existence of a counterforce to crime and had high–probability located it in the northeast in Rye, New York. High probability, Folcroft Sanitarium.

  It all waited for him now, wiping out Force X. But first this Remo would have to go. First him.

  Deussio went to his desk, took out paper and pencil and from the bottom right–hand drawer a pocket calculator, and he set to work. There was no margin for error.

  Well, that was all right. Johnny Deuce didn’t make errors.

  He told himself that more than once. But it didn’t help. There was something in the back of his mind and it was telling him he had forgotten something or someone. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t think of what it was.

  Not for the life of him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND IT, Little Father.”

  “It belongs then in a vast category of human knowledge,” said Chiun. “Which of the many things you do not understand are you talking about?”

  “I don’t understand this about Fielding. If someone wants to attack him, why have they been coming at us first? Why not go right after him? That’s Mystery Number One.”

  Chiun waved his left hand as if it were beneath him even to think of Mystery Number One.

  Remo waited for an answer but got none. Chiun sat instead in his saffron robe on a tufted pillow in the middle of the floor and gave Remo his fullest attention. It was Sunday and Chiun’s soap operas had not been on the television that or the previous day, although he had watched them for the preceding two days and satisfied himself that Remo had fulfilled his promise to keep violence off the TV screen.

  “And then there’s Mystery Number Two. Maria died from radioactive poisoning. Smith’s autopsy showed that. Fielding has a radioactive warehouse. But the grain samples I brought back show no signs of radioactivity. How can that be? That’s Mystery Number Two.”

  With a wave of his right hand, Chiun consigned Mystery Number Two to the same scrap heap as Mystery Number One.

  “How did Fielding disappear in the desert when I was looking for him?” started Remo.

  “Wait,” said Chiun. “Is this Mystery Number Three?”

  “Yes,” said Remo.

  “All right. You may proceed. I just want to be sure to keep them all straight.”

  “Mystery Number Three,” said Remo. “Fielding disappears in the desert. Where was he? Was he lying when he said he must have just come out from under the sun-filter just as I was going in? I think he was lying. Why would he lie when he knows I’m trying to protect him?”

  Pfffit with both hands. So much for Mystery Number Three.

  “Why so many deaths surrounding this project, for God’s sake? Commodities men. Construction men. Who’s behind all that? Who’s trying to louse things up? That’s Mystery Number Four.”

  Remo paused waiting for Chiun’s wave to dismiss Mystery Number Four but no wave came.

  “Well?”

  “Are you quite done?” asked Chiun.

  “Quite.”

  “All right. Then here is Mystery Number Five. If a man sets out on a journey and travels thousands of miles to reach a place that is but a few miles away, he is doing what?”

  “Going in the wrong direction,” said Remo.

  Chiun raised a finger. “Aaah, yes, but that is not the mystery. That is just a question. The mystery is why would a man who has done this and come to know it…why would that man go in the wrong direction again and again? That is the mystery.”

  “I assume all this blather has a point,” Remo said.

  “Yes. The point on your head between your ears. You are that man of Mystery Number Five. You travel and travel in the same direction always, searching for answers, and when you do not find them you keep traveling in the same direction.”

  “And?”

  “And to unravel your mysteries—how many was it, four?—you must take another direction.”

  “Name one.”

  “Suppose your judgment of Mr. Fielding is wrong. Perhaps he is not victim but victimizer; perhaps not good but evil; perhaps he has seen what so many see about you—that you are a fool.” Chiun chuckled. “After all, that is not one of the world’s great mysteries.”

  “Okay. Say you’re right. Why would he do this? If he is evil, what is he gaining by doing good?”

  “And again I say do not jump from false opinions to empty conclusions without stopping to breathe. And sometimes to think.”

  “Are you saying that maybe Fielding has a scheme to do evil?”

  “Aha. Sunrise comes at last, even after the darkest night.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Of all the mysteries, the human heart is the most unfathomable. It is many billions of mysteries for which there are never solutions.”

  Remo plopped back on the couch and closed his eyes as if to puzzle that one through.

  “How American. There is never a solution so now you will weary yourself trying to find a solution. Better you take up one of those things your people call sports, as when two fools try to hit each other with a ball that they hit with paddles. I watched it earlier today.”

  “They’re not trying to hit each other. They’re trying to hit the ball somewhere so that the other player can’t hit it back.”

  “Why not just hit it over the fence?”

  “That’s not in the rules.”

  “The rules are stupid then,” said Chiun. “And what does that pudgy boy with the long hair and the face of a blowfish mean by strutting around like a rooster after hitting a ball?”

  “It’s complicated,” said Remo. He started to sit up to explain, then thought better of it. “It’s tennis. I’ll tell you about it next time.”

  “And another thing. Why do they love each other if they are competitors? It might be one thing for the men to love the pretty woman with the sturdy childbearing legs and the ears despoiled by rings. But to play love games with each other, that is sick.”

  “They’re not in love with each other,” said Remo. “That’s how they keep score.”

  “That’s right. Lie to me because I am Korean. I just heard on television that the one with the blowfish face had a love game. Would Howard Cosell lie to me?”

  “Not if he knew what was good for him.” Remo sank back onto the couch and began to ponder the Fielding mysteries. Let Chiun try to unravel the mysteries of tennis and its scoring. Each man has his own mysteries and sufficient unto the man…That was from the bible. He remembered the bible. It had been frequently referred to at the old orphanage although the nuns discouraged the children from reading it, under the assumption that a god who peeked into bathrooms, thus requiring them to bathe with undergarments on, would not be capable of defending himself against the mind of an inquisitive eight–year–old. Such was the nature of faith, and the stronger the faith the stronger the mistrust and misapprehension that it appeared to be based upon.

  Was his faith in Fielding just that? Or was it just a suspicion of Chiun’s?

  Never mind. He would soon know. Fielding’s Mojave unveiling was tomorrow and Remo and Chiun would be there. That might provide the answer to all mysteries.

  There was another thing Remo remembered Chiun once saying about mysteries. Some cannot be solved. But all can be outlived.

  Remo would see.

  · · ·

  There were others making plans to go to the Mojave too.

  In all of America, there were but eight Ninja experts who were willing to put their training into practice and kill. This, Johnny “Deuce” Deussio found out, after surveying the biggest martial arts schools in the country, weeding his way through overweight truck drivers hoping to be discovered
by television, executives trying to work out their aggressions, purse–snatchers looking for a new tool to aid them in their advancement, to full–fledged muggers.

  He found eight, all instructors, all Orientals. Their average age was forty–two but this did not bother Deussio because he had read all he could about Ninja and found that it differed from the other martial arts by its emphasis on stealth and deception. Karate, kung fu, judo, the rest, they took a man’s strength and intensified it. Ninja was eclectic; it took pieces from all the disciplines, and just those pieces that did not require strength to be efficient.

  Johnny Deuce looked at the eight men gathered in the study of his fortress mansion. They wore business suits and if they had had briefcases, they might have resembled a Japanese executive team out scouring the world to squander its nation’s newfound wealth on racehorses and bad paintings.

  Deussio knew the eight included Japanese and Chinese and at least one Korean, but as he looked at them sitting around him in the study, he felt ashamed to admit to himself that they did all look alike. Except for the one who had hazel eyes. His face was harder than the others; his eyes colder. It was the Korean and Deussio decided, this man has killed. The others? Maybe. At any rate, they were willing. But this one…he has blood on his hands and he likes it.

  “You know what I want,” said Deussio to them. “One man. I want him dead.”

  “Just one?” It was the Korean, speaking in a neat, flavored English.

  “That’s all. But an exceptional man.”

  “Still. Eight exceptional men to bring him down seems excessive,” the Korean said.

  Deussio nodded. “Maybe after you see this, you won’t think so.”

  He nodded to Sally who flipped out the room lights and turned on the movie projector. Deussio had cut the film and this part included only Remo dodging the bullets, climbing the drainpipe, and disposing of the marksman.

  The lights came back on. Some of the men, Deussio noticed, licked their lips nervously. The Korean, the one with the hazel eyes, smiled.

  “Very interesting technique,” he allowed. “But a direct Ninja attack. Very easy to handle. Eight men for this job is precisely seven too many.”

  Deussio smiled. “Just call it my way of insuring success. Now that you’ve seen the film, are you all still in?” He looked around the room. Eight heads nodded in agreement. By God, they did all look alike, he decided.

  “All right then. Five thousand dollars will be deposited in each of your accounts tomorrow morning. Another five thousand dollars each will be deposited upon successful completion of the…er, mission.”

  They nodded again, simultaneously, like little plaster dolls with heads that bobbed on springs.

  The Korean said, “Where will we find this man? Who is he?”

  “I don’t know much about him. His name is Remo. He will be at this place tomorrow.” He gave them Xerox copies of news clippings about Fielding’s Wondergrain and its unveiling in the Mojave.

  He gave them a moment to look at the clippings.

  “When do we attack? Is that left to our discretion?” asked the Korean.

  “The demonstration is set for seven P.M. The attack must begin precisely at eight P.M. Precisely,” said Deussio. “Not one minute early, not one minute late.”

  The Korean stood up. “He is as good as dead.”

  “Since you are so sure of that,” said Deussio, “I want you to head this team. That is not making judgments on any of you others; it’s just that everything works more smoothly if one man is in charge.”

  The Korean nodded and looked around the room. There were no dissenters. Just seven inscrutable masks.

  Deussio gave them airline tickets and watched them leave his study. He was satisfied.

  Just as he had been satisfied the night before when he had met with six snipers who had been recruited from the ranks of mobdom and had showed them the film of Remo wiping out the three Ninja in the alley.

  He had promised them each ten thousand dollars, appointed a leader, and stressed the necessity that the attack begin at eight P.M.

  “Exactly eight o’clock. Exactly. You got that?”

  Nods. Agreement. At least he could tell the men apart.

  He did not tell the snipers that the Ninja would also be attacking Remo, just as he had not told the Ninja about the marksmen. Their minds should be on only one thing. Remo, their target, and that target was as good as dead.

  If he went straight–line attack against the Ninja, the rifles would take him out. And if he went Eastern–style against the rifles, Deussio’s eight Ninja men would get him.

  And if some of the snipers or Ninja got wasted…well that was part of the risk in a high–risk business.

  The important thing was this Remo dead. And after him the rest of Force X. High probability, Folcroft Sanitarium, Rye, New York.

  But as the next day dawned, Deussio remembered his head in the toilet and decided that it would not do just to stay home and wait for the good news. He wanted to be in at the kill.

  “Sally,” he ordered, “we’re going on a trip.”

  “Where we going?”

  “The Mojave Desert. I hear it’s swinging this time of year.”

  “Huh?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE MOJAVE.

  The sun and heat, like hammers to the head, numbed the senses. People stood around, eyes baked dry, seeing everything through shimmering waves of heat. At night, the same people would still see everything through wavering lines, but they would not even notice it, so quickly did the human body and brain adjust to its environment.

  The two large tents had again been erected outside the chain–link fencing that surrounded the experimental planting area, and both tents were crowded now in early evening with press men, with agricultural representatives of foreign countries, and with just the merely curious.

  No one paid particular attention to six men who seemed to lurk about the scene in a group, each carrying a cardboard tube that looked as if it might hold a chart or a map. When a reporter with too much to drink tried to engage one of the men in conversation, he was brushed off with: “Get out of here before I shove my foot up your ass.”

  People peered through the fence of the still–locked compound, hoping for a glimpse of what Fielding might have produced. But the sunscreen filter still stood over the planting area and nothing inside was visible except seating benches.

  A string of limousines, Cadillacs and Lincolns, were parked in a long line leading to the tents, along with one Rolls–Royce which belonged to the delegate from India, who was complaining that parts of America were so beastly hot, what, that it was no wonder the national character was so defective.

  “We understand, sir,” said a reporter, “that your country is the only one which has made no effort to sign up for Mr. Fielding’s miracle grain, if it is successful.”

  “That is correct,” said the delegate smoothly. “We will first examine the results and then we will plan our future policy accordingly.”

  “It would have seemed,” said the reporter, “that with your chronic food problem, your nation would have been first in line.”

  “We will not have policy dictated to us by imperialists. If we have a food problem, it is our own.”

  “It seems strange then,” said the reporter who was very young, “that America is continually asked to supply your nation with food.”

  The Indian delegate turned and walked away haughtily. He did not have to be insulted.

  The reporter looked after him, then saw standing next to him an aged Oriental, resplendent in a blue robe.

  “Do not be confused, young man,” said Chiun. “Indians are that way. Greedy and unappreciative.”

  “And your nation, sir?” asked the reporter, gently prying.

  “His nation,” said Remo quickly, “is America. Come, Little Father.”

  Out of hearing of the reporter, Chiun spat upon the sand floor of the tent. “Why did you tell that awful lie?”
>
  “Because North Korea, where Sinanju is, is a Communist country. We don’t have diplomatic relations with them. Tell that reporter you’re from North Korea and your picture’ll be on every front page tomorrow. Every reporter will want to know what you’re doing here.”

  “And I will tell them. I am interested in the onward march of science.”

  “Fine,” said Remo.

  “And I am employed in a secret capacity by the United State government…”

  “Great,” said Remo.

  “To train assassins and to kill the enemies of the Great Emperor Smith, thus preserving the Constitution.”

  “Do that and Smith’ll cut off the funds for Sinanju.”

  “Against my better judgment,” said Chiun, “I will remain silent.”

  Chiun seemed to stop in mid–sentence. He was looking through the opening of the tent at a group of men,

  “Those men have been watching you,” said Chiun.

  “What men?”

  “The men you are going to alert by turning around like a weathervane, shouting ‘what men?’ The Korean and the other nondescripts inside the tent.”

  Remo moved casually around Chiun and took in the men at a glance. Eight of them, Orientals, in their thirties and forties. They seemed ill at ease as if the business suits they wore did not really belong to them.

  “I don’t know them,” Remo said.

  “It is enough that they know you.”

  “Maybe it’s you they’re after,” said Remo. “Maybe they came looking for a pool game.”

  Chiun’s answer was interrupted by a roar from the crowd, which surged forward toward the locked guarded gates, Remo saw that Fielding had just driven up in a pickup truck.

  Reporters pressed toward him as he stepped down from the driver’s seat.

  “Well, Mr. Fielding, what about it? We going to see anything today?”

  “Just a few minutes. Then you can see to your heart’s content.”

  Fielding signaled for the uniformed guards to open the gates and as they did, he turned toward the crowd.

  “I’d appreciate it if you would move inside and take seats on the benches,” he said. “That way everyone will be able to see.”