"For how long?" Smith asked acidly.
The girl laughed. "Don't be afraid. You won't be held prisoner for long. A week, perhaps."
"May I ask the purpose of my visit?"
"I was hoping you would. Your presence is required at a conference to be attended by a hundred of the best minds in the world. You have been selected to represent the computer arts."
"There must be some mistake," Smith began.
"No mistake." She took a deep, bored breath. "In 1944, while on active duty in the OSS, you helped to design plans for a military data-storage machine that eventually became what is known as UNIVAC, the first computer. Since then, despite your obsessive quest for anonymity, the sporadic papers you wrote on every facet of computer operations from the earliest digital models to the first non-binomial language have made history. The fact that you received your doctorate after you were already established as a leading authority in your field came as no surprise to anyone aware of your abilities."
"How did you find that out?" Smith asked irritably.
"My employer has many resources at his disposal. Not the least of them is a tremendous supply of funds for research into our delegates' pasts."
Smith shifted uneasily in his seat. "That was a long time ago," he said, adding, "it was never my field in the first place."
She smiled. "Yes, of course. Your name has not come up in the literature of computer technology for more than a decade. You have never been employed as a computer analyst. You work as the director of Folcroft Sanitarium. Sure. And Bobby Fischer is a beach bum."
"What?"
She regarded him levelly. "The way one lives does not alter one's ability, Dr. Smith. Your ability with computers is what matters, not your job."
"You've got the wrong man," Smith said gruffly.
"We would if we hadn't traced you through a computer."
Smith stiffened.
"There's no need for paranoia. We assumed that if you were still active in the field, a computer would be near you. It was the best way to reach you. Your information banks weren't tapped, if that's what you're afraid of."
He felt as if he were going to lose control of his bladder. The information banks weren't pirated. He said only, "I don't believe you."
Circe shrugged. "That makes no difference to me. I just thought it would set your mind at rest to know that whatever arcane project you were working on wasn't snooped on. Not that we didn't try. Your circuitry is too complex. That was when we knew you were our man."
"But the messages..."
She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Think about it, Dr. Smith. The telephone."
His mouth opened as the realization hit him. "The phones were dead," he said in wonder.
"A general short-circuit. The emergency generator kept the lights and whatever hospital machinery you have operating automatically. The phones and the computer are linked, of course. They usually are."
"But the message."
"A special hookup into your phone system. Temporary. It's gone by now."
"And the recorded instructions to meet you?"
"A one-time routing. That line no longer exists."
He looked at her for a long moment. "You people are certainly going to a lot of trouble," he said.
"There's a lot at stake."
She didn't speak again until they touched down on a small runway on what appeared to be a deserted island. Tropical plants and exotic flowering trees grew along the strip in primitive abandon. But somehow the atmosphere of the place was strangely oppressive. The air was heavy with the moisture of salt spray. Overhead, a cloud blotted out the small, high sun, making Smith feel as if he were in an enclosed box.
Circe turned off the engine and motioned for him to leave the craft. As he rose, she folded her hand over the handle of his attaché case.
"You can't have that," Smith said.
"No?" She drew a pistol from under the seat and held it steady inches from his face. The gun was only a .22 caliber, but at point-blank range would have turned his face into a rosette garnish of flesh.
With a hiss of disgust, he left the case with her. "One more thing," he said. "When I asked you if you were behind this, you said, 'Not exactly.' Just who is your employer? Exactly."
She reached across him and flung open his door. The damp air rushed in and surrounded him like sticky hands.
"A name you may have heard of, Dr. Smith," she said, smiling slowly. "Welcome to the realm of Abraxas."
?Chapter Five
"Abraxas, Abraxas."
Chiun stood on the small terrace of the motel in West Mahomset, a half-mile from the Peabody house, and muttered into the wind. His almond eyes were narrowed in concentration. His hands with their long taloned fingernails lay folded inside the sleeves of his long green satin robe. The breeze was high, causing the white wisps of hair on his head and chin to billow gently. "Abraxas," he repeated. "I am sure that is what it was."
"What'd you say, Little Father?" Remo shouted from inside. When the old man didn't answer, Remo peered out, stuffing the photograph of Orville Peabody into an envelope. "What's that?"
"Hmmmm? A name, I think. It is confusing." He shook his head. Long tendrils of mustache swayed from side to side.
"Tell me. Maybe I can help."
"Help? You?"
"Stranger things have happened," Remo said jauntily. "All right, then. Don't tell me."
"Abraxas," Chiun said, his face solemn.
"Abraxas?"
"That is the word. I do not yet know what it means."
Remo smiled. "Case solved, Chiun. 'Abraxas' is what this Peabody guy said before he died. You must have heard it on Cheeta Ching's Left Wing Propaganda Update."
"The news? You think so?"
"Of course. What else could it be? Smitty told me about it over the phone."
Chiun looked at once thoughtful and worried. "There is something strange about the name. I have difficulty banishing it from my thoughts. It seems to follow me, even in sleep."
"Abraxas? I never heard it before Smitty called."
"Is that so unusual?" Chiun snapped. "Most thoughts pass by your mind with no more impression than a butterfly's breath."
"That's Korean gratitude for you," Remo said. "I help you out, and you insult me."
"Another thing," the old Oriental said hesitantly, his pensive frown returning.
"About Abraxas? Or my feeble mind?"
"I see the name, rather than hear it. It is like a vision. And when I see it, the vision appears in both English and Korean."
"A vision with subtitles," Remo mused.
"Idiot. The name is the vision, the name itself! Oh, why was it my fate to teach a brainless white boy with the sensitivity of a buffalo?" He jumped up and down, the ancient eyes glinting with anger. "The name Abraxas is the vision. It appears in bold characters, strung on a webbing of fine gray lines—"
"Calm down, Little Father. I understand," Remo said softly.
"You do not understand. You are humoring me because you think I am an old man losing my grasp on reality. That is what the ignorant young always think of their elders when confronted with something beyond their knowledge."
Remo took a step backward. "Whatever you say."
"Silence! I should never have mentioned it to you. Go on about your business."
"Look, uh... I don't think my meeting with Mrs. Peabody is going to take long. Why don't you just wait here for me till I come back?"
"I shall do as I please," the old man said stubbornly.
"Sure, Chiun. I want you to. Really. It's just—"
Chiun clenched his jaw in exasperation. "I am not crazed, Remo."
"Okay, okay." He held the envelope in front of him like a shield.
"So? Will you please go? Or do you think that this doddering maniac will leap to the street to molest infants in your absence?"
"Aw, don't be antsy." He caught his breath. "I mean... I mean..."
"Never mind," Chiun said. "I am going to the library. When I
return, you will see that the Master of Sinanju is still in full possession of his faculties and that you, once again, are wrong."
"What's at the library?"
"Knowledge," Chiun said flatly. "I intend to search out the lesser writings of Ung the poet and Wang the Greater, most important Master of Sinanju. If the name 'Abraxas' is of any importance, it will be found in their sublime thoughts."
"I don't know how many sublime thoughts are floating around the West Mahomset Public Library," Remo said.
"If it is a true vision, then it will be made clear to me."
Remo waited a moment longer, watching the old man. At last he said, "Okay, Chiun. I'll see you later," and left.
But the thought of his old teacher chasing after wild hallucinations frightened him and made him sad. He decided to call Smith as soon as he was through with Mrs. Peabody and request a leave for himself and Chiun in Sinanju. Seeing his home again would make the old man happy.
He walked to the Peabody house feeling very tired.
Arlene Peabody was a tidy little birdlike woman with a bubble of bright red teased hair surrounding her face and making her look like a sunburned medicine ball. "I just don't understand it!" she shrieked with an ease that led Remo to believe that shrieking was the woman's mode of communication. "I mean, he was right here, right here on the couch in his pajamas watching "Masterpiece Theatre" one night, and the next morning he was gone. Poof. It was like he vanished." She burst into a torrent of hysterical laughter followed by a heavy flow of tears.
"It's all right, Mrs. Peabody," Remo said placatingly, patting her shoulder.
She threw off his arm with a wild gesture. "It's not all right! Everything's a mess. The kids won't go to school anymore. People keep telling them their father was a killer. I can't show my face in the supermarket. The house is always crawling with cops and CIA men and reporters, and now you."
"I was a friend of Orville's," Remo lied.
"You were?" The tears were still fresh in her eyes.
"And I don't think he put himself up to that business in Rome."
She leapt up from the couch. "That's what I've been telling everybody!" she screeched. "Never a word, nothing. Just poof, gone. No good-bye kiss, nothing. He didn't even take a clean shirt. Then three weeks later he shows up dead. On the front page of the newspaper!" She wailed like a banshee.
"Mrs. Peabody—"
"Now they're saying Orville was some kind of political terrorist or something."
"The man he killed was a terrorist."
"Oh, who cares?" she stormed. "Orville and I hardly ever watched the news. He wasn't interested in that stuff. Cub Scouts and mowing the lawn, that was all Orville cared about. Cub Scouts. Is that a hobby for a killer? I tell you, he couldn't have done it."
"A hundred people saw him do it."
"I don't care. It must have been one of those clones or something."
"Oh, come on...."
"Don't say it's not possible," she screamed. "I've got African violets that are cloned."
"I really don't think your husband was a clone," Remo said with as straight a face as possible.
"Then how'd he get to Italy? We have exactly six hundred and twenty-seven dollars in our savings account. It wasn't touched. Even if he'd taken out every cent, it wouldn't have been enough to fly over to Italy."
"He went by way of Newfoundland."
She looked puzzled. "Where's that?"
"Off the coast of Canada."
"That's stupid," Mrs. Peabody said. "Why would he fly to Canada to get to Italy?"
Remo shrugged. "Beats me."
"It wasn't him, I tell you."
"I've got a picture." He pulled out the photograph. It was a good clear shot that captured Peabody during the moment between his act of violence and his death at the hands of the angry mob. The man's face was radiant and unafraid, his eyes smiling with satisfaction.
Mrs. Peabody gasped and lunged for it. "This isn't Orville!" she shouted.
Remo looked at the photograph, alarmed. "Didn't you identify the body at the morgue?"
"Yes, but that was a clone, too. Look." She dashed around the room like a mad thing, picking photographs off the mantle and the end tables. She threw them at Remo. "See for yourself."
He studied them one at a time, comparing them with Smith's picture of the assassin. They were different, all right. The features were identical, but the bland, forgettable expressions on the faces in Mrs. Peabody's pictures of her husband bore no resemblance to the transfixed, almost mystical look of ecstasy in the photograph Remo had brought with him.
"He looks— I don't know— healthier or something in the new one," Remo said.
Mrs. Peabody made sputtering noises like a chicken gagging. "It was a clone, I tell you."
"Mrs. Peabody..."
"I know my husband's face. He didn't smile, for one thing. He said it gave him indigestion. And he didn't like the sun."
Remo looked up from the pictures. "What did you say?"
"He didn't like sun." She stared at him. "The clone has a suntan."
Remo slapped his forehead. Of course! That was the difference in the pictures. Mrs. Peabody's visual records of her husband showed a man who was not only sullen and lackluster, but pale as the underside of a trout. The "new" Peabody, however, the man who looked as if he was ready to pass out cigars after killing a man in cold blood, was dark. As dark as if he'd spent weeks in the sun.
"Now do you believe he was cloned?"
"I don't know what to believe," Remo said.
She sat down heavily. "At least you're honest," she said. "It's just too weird. But other things have been weird around here."
"Like what?"
"Like this Abraxas stuff," she said wearily. "That was what Orville was supposed to have said before he... before he..."
"I know. And?"
"And so that's probably why I keep thinking about it. I mean, the CIA was so interested in it and everything. They kept asking me what I knew about it."
"What'd you tell them?"
"Nothing. I don't even know what it means. Orville certainly never said anything about it. As far as I'm concerned, it's just some weird name. Only..." She looked at Remo through wide, frightened eyes.
"Only what?"
She looked away. "Oh, forget it. Maybe I'm losing my mind. I'm a housewife, you see." She whispered it as if it were a confession. "I've got problems coping, you know? I eat Valiums like M&M's. They probably softened my brain. I read somewhere that can happen."
"Only what, Mrs. Peabody?"
"I told my neighbor, and she laughed at me."
"I won't laugh," Remo said. He waited.
"Promise?"
"Promise."
"Well, okay." She looked at him sideways, suspiciously. "I knew the name before it was ever in the papers."
Remo felt the air press out of his lungs. "You mean Abraxas?" he asked softly.
She nodded. "It started happening right after Orville disappeared. This funny name would be swimming around in my head. You know, like a radio commercial that follows you around all day? That's what it's like. 'Abraxas, Abraxas, Abraxas,' " she droned. "I can see the word plain as day in front of my face right now. Oh, it's just weird."
Remo's face had drained of color. "Go on," he said woodenly.
"Don't you think I'm crazy?"
"No," Remo said.
"All right. The other night I was tucking my kids in bed as usual. It had been a really rough day, what with all the police and the CIA guys and the neighborhood hecklers and the newsmen and photographers and everything. I had to go to the morgue that day, too. It was awful."
"What happened, Mrs. Peabody?" Remo said impatiently.
"Well, it was just so rotten, I guess I went to pieces after dinner. I cried my eyes out, thinking about all kinds of things. Then I went up to kiss the boys good night. My youngest son was already asleep, but Timmy, my ten-year-old, was waiting up for me. He told me not to cry." Mrs. Peabody stared straight ahe
ad, as if in a trance. "He said, 'Mommy, don't cry. Abraxas is going to make it all better.' That was the weirdest part of all."
Remo stood up. "I'd better go."
"You don't believe me, do you?"
"I told you I did," Remo said. "You're not crazy. You and your son aren't the only people who've seen that hallucination."
"It's not a hallucination!" she shrieked. "Abraxas is a name. He's somebody, a person. I tell you he cloned Orville, and God only knows what he's going to do to the rest of us."
"I'll check it out," Remo said.
The lady was nutty as a fruitcake. Still, something in her words made Remo shiver.
What, he asked himself on his way back to the motel. That the strange name, Abraxas, sprouting simultaneously in the minds of three people, belonged to a real person? Crazy. Simply crazy. It just wasn't possible.
God only knows what he's going to do to the rest of us.
?Chapter Six
He owed Chiun an apology.
Remo walked back slowly, trying to make sense of the strange trail where Smith's simple assignment had led him. So far, he knew next to nothing: A man named Orville Peabody had disappeared from his home to emerge three weeks later as an international assassin. Judging from his tanned skin, Peabody had probably spent those weeks in a warm climate. But doing what? And for whom? What had accounted for the drastic change in his personality shown by the photographs?
Then there was the Abraxas connection. That was the most puzzling part of the whole business. A man's dying word, seen before the fact by his wife and mentioned again by his child. Abraxas is going to make it all better, the kid had said, if Remo was to believe Mrs. Peabody.
And he did believe her. What she had told him was too close to Chiun's description of his own visions to be tossed aside as lunacy.
It had been a mistake not to trust Chiun. Abraxas was the key to the riddle that had been woven like a net around the murders of the three terrorists, and Chiun was one of the people who held it.
"Little Father, I'm sorry," Remo began as he entered the motel room, but the words stuck in his throat at the sight that confronted him.
In the middle of the room stood a black lacquer edifice of some kind, trimmed in gold and reaching as high as the ceiling. It resembled a miniature stepped pyramid, like photographs Remo had seen of the ancient Aztec tombs at Chichen Itza. At each of its many levels burned long fragrant ivory-colored tapers that made the pryamid shimmer with bright flame.
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