Then there was fire, a stench and contortions of agony.
IT DIDN'T LAST long enough, but burning Amelia Powlik was the most deeply satisfying thing Dawn Summens had ever done in her life. She even enjoyed the aroma. "Smells like victory!" she told the steaming human ruin happily.
She was getting more of her own will back every moment. She had to avoid people for a while. She had to get out of here, get things done. Not that Grom would be back anytime soon if he was really going on a full round of stops at all the resorts.
It was how he had done it for the past two years. He would go out one or two nights a week and sprinkle GUTX powder in the breakfast fare. He had tried coffee, eggs, pancake mix, whatever, before finding he had the best results with the breakfast potatoes, of all things.
Almost everybody ate them. The staff at the hotels had received the suggestion that it was perfectly normal and acceptable for him to sprinkle stuff on the breakfast food. It was also standard operating procedure to broadcast Greg Grom's message to Union Island visitors over the loudspeakers during breakfasts following his midnight visits. The tourists invariably complained when the racket started, but soon they would be agreeing with every suggestion Grom made.
It would take him a couple of hours to hit all the resorts. The longer the better, as far as Dawn Summens was concerned.
Chapter 38
"Yech," Remo Williams said. "Get a whiff of that."
"No, thank you," Chiun answered as he crinkled his nose into a hundred extra wrinkles and put his hands in his kimono sleeves as if to protect all possible flesh from exposure to the air in this place, which had to be toxic.
"Sex. Blood. Sweat. Somebody had a hell of an orgy, and it wasn't one of those nice orgies where everybody smiles. Looks like there was some beating and whipping involved."
"And burning," Chiun said, moving to the open doors of the balcony. Remo joined him a moment later and they gazed down at the horrid burned thing in the sand. "These people like it pretty rough," Remo said.
Chiun glanced down at what Remo was holding. It was a small wooden drawer, empty.
"It's from the bedside table." Remo held it up and took a cautious sniff. His eyes widened.
"It is the poison."
"It is, but Grom is gone and he must have taken it with him."
"We must find him."
Remo looked down at the black thing. "Maybe she knows."
OUT OF THE DARKNESS came a souring song of agony. Her body flared to life with pain that burned and burned-
Until a hand touched her, on the neck, and the pain became as nothing.
"I was on fire," she said.
"Your skin is very burned," said a kind voice, a voice like someone old and young at once.
"Am I going to live?"
"Doubtful," said the kind, high voice.
"We need your help," said the voice of a younger man, deep and attractive.
"I'm going to die?"
"Where is Greg Grom?" the younger man's voice asked.
"President Grom is gone," she said, and she tried to smile.
HER EYES STARED into the heavens dreamily. Remo looked at Chiun, who was manipulating the woman's charred flesh, looking for the nerves underneath. "She is badly damaged and very heavily intoxicated with the poison," Chiun said. "Her body is fighting for life and fighting with itself."
"Can't you snap her out of it?"
"She is already much too snapped."
Remo wasn't sure what to think about the poor blackened thing on the sand. She was a victim. They were all victims. Even the pair at the restaurant who tried to poison their dinner. None acted with a will of their own. The list of responsible parties was really extremely small.
"We gotta find Grom," Remo said. Chiun looked at him expectantly.
"I don't know how," Remo answered the unasked question. "I just know we have to."
"Why?" Chiun asked.
Remo made an exaggerated gesture at the sizzling woman. "Hello? Bad man up to no good?"
"Do not speak to me in that way, please. What kind of no good do you think he is up to?"
Remo fretted. "Who knows? Probably doing what he does-you know, poisoning all the tourists. Dosing them up."
"And he would do it in what way?"
"Same way they did us, I guess-put it in the pasta Puttanesca." Remo looked at the moon over the water. He looked suddenly at Chiun. "Or the scrambled eggs. What if he goes at night to the hotels and sprinkles his special seasoning in the food for the morning breakfast buffets? He'd get pretty good coverage."
"That would be effective," Chiun agreed.
"So we make the rounds of the hotels until we find him."
Amelia Powlik sat up. "Where you going?"
"Maybe you should keep from moving around too much," Remo said as he watched part of her upper-arm skin slough off in a black crust.
"Wait, you. You sound kinda good-looking. Stay with me and let's get to know each other."
"You gotta be kidding me," Remo said to no one in particular.
"WE GOT A CALL for a paramedic backup," the dispatcher said.
"Take a message!" answered Chief of Police Checker Spence as another huge boom shook the police station, like a subterranean explosion. "Where's Weil and Lambert?"
"On their way," the dispatcher said.
There was another boom. This time it sounded different. Less resonant. The Coke on a nearby desk sloshed inside its bottle. "What about Fornes? Is he coming?"
"Fornes is dead, Chief," the dispatcher reminded him. Spence stiffened, then nodded. Fornes had been killed by Alan from the tourism department, who bit a chunk out of his neck. The wound was huge. Fornes bled to death. And then Agnes, that nice old lady, had tried to do the same thing to Chief Spence.
The floor shook with another boom from below. That would be Alan from the tourism department. And dear old Agnes. And the rest of the insane maniacs they had transported from the aircraft to the police lockup down below. They had been prone to violence, but at least they had quieted down eventually. Chief Checker Spence liked his maniacs quiet and cooperative.
So he became perturbed when the maniacs in the lockup started getting excited again an hour ago. Soon they were pounding the walls. Now they were pounding the doors. And Checker Spence had a sinking feeling...
Another boom, this time accompanied by a crunch. The steel door hadn't failed, but the concrete that held the bolts had crumbled.
Spence rushed to the top of the stairs. "Simone!"
"They're breaking through, Chief!" Officer Simone called up.
"Get the hell out of-"
Another boom and then a creaking sound, followed by a powerful crash.
"They're out!" shouted Officer Jacot from somewhere out of sight.
Spence shouted. "Simone! Jacot! Get out of there now!"
Simone came into view at the bottom of the stairs, but he was looking back the way he'd come. His handgun was drawn.
Spence hurried down the stairs. "Do not fire your weapons!"
He was almost drowned out by the thunderous gunfire and shouting. It wasn't Simone. Simone was just standing there.
Chief Checker Spence reached the bottom just in time to watch Officer Jacot die. The man was triggering his gun in every direction, shouting at the mob of bloody, battered, silent figures who encircled him. They moved ponderously, without speaking, ignoring those among them who fell from gunshot wounds. Jacot ran out of bullets and the mob closed in. They grabbed his arms and legs. They grabbed his head. They sank their fingers in the flesh of his torso. Jacot was lifted off the ground.
Jacot realized his fate then. He made an ungodly sound. Then the eerily silent mob pulled his body apart.
"CALL THE MAINLAND!" Chief Spence barked at the dispatcher as he dragged Simone out and slammed the door, locking it with a dead bolt. "Call the army!" The dispatcher ignored him and looking around worriedly. "Where's Jacot?"
Officer Simone giggled. "He's all over the place." One glance told
Captain Spence that Simone had gone out for lunch and might never come back.
"Oh, great," he said. Then he heard the sodden clomp of heavy feet on the stairs.
"Are you calling for help?" he asked the dispatcher.
"Who you want me to call exactly?" she asked, getting worried now.
There was a crash against the door to the basement. They were throwing their whole bodies against it. The dead bolt was already buckling.
"Forget it," Chief Spence said. "It's too late. Let's go."
THE UNION ISLAND MUSEUM of Natural History had a sophisticated security system, but Dawn Summens had an override code. She punched in the code, commanding the alarm system to maintain a silent but active state. She didn't want the museum curator to notice that his little green LEDs had blinked off.
Curator Matthew Builder was just a nosy old busybody two years ago when he retired from the University of Florida at Miami. Greg Grom had been on his way to the top, laying the groundwork for his wild popularity spree, and had already moved into the Union Island Tourism Promotions Department. Grom rarely made intelligent decisions-it was sheer stupid luck that got him everything he had-but latching on to the old codger from Florida State had been a rare smart move.
When Professor Builder told Grom his dig sites on the island were of marginal value in terms of the greater archaeological research record, Greg Grom had suggested otherwise. Grom suggested, in fact, that it was the most important Native American site in the Caribbean islands.
"Why would I think that?" Professor Builder had asked as the GUTX laid his self-determination in Greg Grom's lap.
"You'll think of a reason," Grom told the prof. And sure enough, Builder did. He claimed discovery of a series of hieroglyphics that showed the little-known Miytec of pre-Columbian Union Island had been rulers of far-reaching power, maybe for centuries. Newly translated Miytec hieroglyphics told how Miytec priests claimed to wield power over "all the kings of the earth." How the Miytec priests would receive the kings of all the lands. All rulers of power and influence were invited to drink the Miytec priests' sacred brew. The great secret was that, once the brew had been consumed, these men invariably became pliant to the suggestion of the Miytec priests.
Greg Grom had almost panicked when he heard the tale. It was too close for comfort. But even Professor Builder did not believe that the priests had ever had this power-he only claimed that this was what the priests themselves believed.
Professor Builder's reputation was rock solid. That's why Grom chose him. Despite a lack of archaeological verification, his theory was widely accepted. Even those who thought he was wrong still considered his claims worth investigating. Union Island became the subject of serious scientific inquiry, which boosted its prestige. Greg Grom got all the credit for it.
Professor Builder, at Grom's suggestion, returned to Union Island to serve as director of research for the Union Island Museum of Natural History, where a well-paid management staff took care of the day-to-day operations and Builder spent his days immersed in his research while the grant money, thanks to a few more well-placed suggestions, poured in too fast for the museum to spend it all.
Builder was always at the museum late into the evening. This was well-known among the Union Islanders. His car was also well-known-an electric golf cart with orange curling hot-rod flames painted on the doors. The cart was invariably parked in Builder's reserved spot at the private entrance in the rear of the museum. It was there now. From the third-floor research labs a single office blazed with light.
Dawn Summens knew the old professor would be buried in his research. She was pretty sure she could get in and out of the museum without attracting his attention.
But just in case... Well, she had brought a little something from President Grom's presidential beach house. It was a dagger of black obsidian, almost five hundred years old, and it had been one of Grom's first finds when he was a student intern on the island. It was incredible that something so fragile could have survived so many centuries, but it was intact.
If Professor Builder gave Dawn any trouble, she was going to see what kind of real damage it could do. She found herself hoping she'd get the chance.
Chapter 39
The phone beeped just as President Grom was pulling into the employee parking lot at the Turquoise Seas Beach Resort.
"Mr. President? It's Gaiman at the Miytec."
Grom switched off the engine and killed the stereo. Art Gaiman was the night manager at the Miytec Moon Village Resort. The old resort had recently been renovated and expanded with the addition of a new wing of three hundred hotel rooms. That made it one of the largest resorts on the island in terms of the sheer numbers of vacationers it could host. The Miytec was also the closest big resort to the town center, and it had been Grom's very first stop on his evening rounds.
"What's the problem, Art?"
"Well, Mr. President, it's about the hash brown potatoes."
Greg Grom felt his stomach tighten into a hard, knotted ball. "What about the hash brown potatoes?" he asked.
"Two men just came and stole 'em, Mr. President. All of them. Took every one of the tubs that you was working on tonight."
"Took them where?" Grom demanded.
"Down to the beach. That's the funny thing. They just heaved them out into the ocean. Never would have thought a man could send a plastic tub of hash browns that far. Splashed into the water so far out I couldn't see it and I could barely hear it."
"A white guy? With dead-man eyes? And a little Chinese grandpa?"
"Yeah! That's them!" Art exclaimed. "Asked for directions to the nearest resort and I told them because I wasn't going to say no to those two. Those two are crazy. I think they're gonna do the same fool thing over at Monte Carlo. What do those two have against perfectly good hash brown potatoes?"
Grom wasn't listening. His high spirits had fled like the breeze, when just a minute ago he thought everything was finally going his way, for once.
How come that pair of oddball agents wasn't dead? Grom had made sure that wherever those two showed up for dinner tonight they would get dosed with GUTX. A lot of it. Enough to send them into the deepest sleep of all.
That hadn't happened. The agents were alive, and they knew what Grom was doing. Which meant they knew why he was doing it. So they knew he had been using GUTX dosing to get him to where he was now.
Which meant they just might be able to bring it all to a screeching halt.
Unless, Grom thought determinedly, he screeching halted them first.
REMO HAD STOPPED explaining himself. At each resort they came to he simply barged in, headed for the kitchens and began looking for the tubs of thawing hash brown potatoes.
It was always the same. Big plastic ten-gallon or twenty-gallon tubs in the walk-in coolers filled with the same brand of spiced, shredded breakfast potatoes. The empty plastic bags would be in the trash can.
"You can't take the potatoes!" the night manager at the first resort had cried. "The visitors love our potatoes!" Apparently Greg Grom knew that. He had a system in place that so far seemed to include every hotel and resort on the island. In the evening the food-service crew would start thawing as many bags of hash brown potatoes as would be needed for the morning breakfast crowd. Grom would stop by and stir in a little poison. Next morning the thawed spuds were served to the tourists.
"The president come often to inspect your hash brown potatoes?" he asked the night manager at the first resort.
"Coupla times a week. Why shouldn't he?"
That was the really weird thing about it-the resort staff went along with it all as if it were perfectly normal. After Remo confiscated the tubs of spuds he would head for the ocean and shot-put them into it. Meanwhile, Chiun would be nosing around the kitchen looking for any other poisoned foodstuffs. But so far the poison was always in the hash browns.
The routine changed on their sixth stop, the Turquoise Seas Beach Resort. Remo wheeled the borrowed taxicab into the palm-lined front driv
e and found a throng of well-dressed vacationers in the lobby veranda.
"A reception line," Remo observed. "'Think it's for us?"
"I think it's for you," Chiun said.
The crowd came down to greet them. Some still had drinks in their hands.
"Grom must've heard we were after him and he suggested the late-night partyers come welcome us."
"I can smell the stink of intoxicants already," Chiun agreed.
Remo pulled the car away just before it came within reach of the crowd. Driving on the grass, he took the shortcut to the service entrance, hidden behind some decorative tropical topiary.
"They have a lot of staff on the late-night shift at this place," Remo noted. There were about twenty of them. Cooks and cleanup crew, bellhops and janitors. Every one of them had a big knife of some kind.
"They must do their butchering overnight," Chiun remarked.
"Well, let's try not to do any ourselves, okay?" Remo said. "These people aren't murderers."
Chiun waved imperiously. "Then you take care of the problem."
Remo didn't have time to argue. Besides, it was probably the best option. He stepped from the cab and found the gang of staff bearing down on him. More of them were streaming out of the kitchen doors.
These weren't skilled fighters. And their hearts weren't in it. "Sorry about this, buddy," said the chef in a white paper hat as he swung a cleaver at Remo's neck.
"Sorry? Sorry isn't good enough." Remo stepped around the cleaver and pinched the chef's neck. He had to smack away the blade of a kitchen assistant who was aiming for Remo and would have chopped the throat of the slumping chef in the process. Then he put the kitchen assistant to sleep, too. For the next few seconds he became a whirlwind of motion among the confused, drugged night staff, who slumped to the ground one after another until only Remo remained standing, surrounded by unconscious bodies strewed around the service bay.
He jogged inside, grabbed the poison-smelling breakfast potatoes in the walk-in cooler and headed for the beachside dock. Here the resort tied up a boat used to take snorkelers to the nearby reef. Remo stopped at the end of the dock and sent the tubs flying hundreds of yards out into the night. He turned and sped off the dock before the last of them had even splashed into the water.
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