Deadly Genes td-117

by Warren Murphy

  "Only to those who don't know you like I do, Little Father," Remo said warmly.

  "Do not be maudlin, Remo," Chiun chided. "There are those who think me old. Yet I do not require a cane. And so you see the true nature of all riddles." He nodded sagely.

  Remo's face clouded. "I do?" he said.

  "Yes," Chiun responded. "The answer is that riddles are a foolish waste of time." He rose from the carpet like a puff of escaping steam. "We will learn the true secret of this animal when we see it."

  With that, the old Asian padded from the room. As he watched the frail figure pass out into the hallway, Remo felt his heart warm. Even though his mentor technically hadn't gone anywhere, it still felt good to have Chiun back.

  "I know where we can find one," Remo called after his teacher. He hurried out into the hall. A moment later, the front door clicked shut.

  They were not gone more than two minutes before the phone began ringing urgently.

  The desperate jangling echoed into empty, darkened rooms.

  Chapter 15

  Smith let the telephone ring precisely one hundred times before finally replacing the receiver. Obviously, Remo was either out or was not answering his phone. As for Chiun, the old Korean rarely deigned to answer the telephone.

  The CURE director was sitting in his cracked leather chair. Around him, his austere Folcroft administrator's office had been swallowed by shadows. A single drab bulb glowed atop his desk.

  It had been many hours since last he slept. Gray eyes burned behind rimless glasses as he stared at the silent blue phone.

  All but a skeleton crew remained at Folcroft so late after midnight. Without a major crisis for CURE, it was late even for Smith to be working. But he had been waiting for something specific.

  The envelope sent by Remo had arrived late in the morning of what was now the previous day. Under the guise of an FBI investigation, Smith had immediately forwarded the mysterious object contained within it to the Smithsonian Institution for analysis.

  He had then sat back and waited.

  Day stretched into night and had moved on into the postmidnight hour of the following day before the results finally came back. When the answer was at last sent back along the circuitous electronic computer route Smith had established to ensure secrecy, the CURE director found it as puzzling as Remo's mystery of the BBQ tracks.

  He had seen the object with his own eyes before sending it along to the Smithsonian. It was small and half-moon shaped. The tough material was cupped and came to a curving point at the far end.

  The object Smith had seen jibed perfectly with the determination of the Smithsonian. He rebuked himself for not coming to the same, obvious conclusion.

  Forensic scientists at the Washington institution had concluded that the item was nothing more than a woman's artificial fingernail. The kind glued on to increase normal cuticle length and strength.

  In his report, the Smithsonian scientist who had forwarded his conclusions to Smith asked if the nail was part of an FBI serial-killer investigation. In his final e-mail, Smith issued nothing more than a blunt thank-you.

  Smith reread the report displayed on his monitor as he considered whether or not he should try to call Remo again.

  Pam Push-On Nail. The Smithsonian had even determined the specific brand of artificial nail.

  Remo claimed to have found the fingernail in a wound of one of the BBQ victims. Smith considered briefly that Remo might be playing some kind of sick joke. He decided almost as soon as the thought occurred to him that this wouldn't be the case. Remo's sense of humor had never been so inappropriately ghoulish.

  Which left Smith with a new baffling mystery. The six HETA people in Concord had been men. Only Remo and a single BBQ had been in the area. How and why was the fingernail left in one of the bodies?

  Smith stared, unblinking, at the report, hoping somehow that some new insight would leap out at him. But it remained little more than words on a screen. Even so, for some reason, this new information gave him a feeling of inexplicable dread.

  Tearing his eyes from his computer screen, Harold Smith snaked an arthritic hand to the phone. Maybe Remo was home by now.

  Chapter 16

  The parking lot of BostonBio was virtually empty. Remo assumed the few parked vehicles belonged to security guards or janitorial staff.

  He expected he might find some resistance at the front desk due to the lateness of the hour, but the Department of Agriculture identification he had been using for the past few days got both him and Chiun onto the elevator. The lift carried them silently up to the third floor.

  The impersonal silver doors opened into a long hallway, bathed in darkness. Remo led Chiun to the door of the lab where he had first met Judith White.

  "No key," Remo said. "Guess we do it the old-fashioned way." He reached for the knob, planning to pop it open.

  Reading his intentions, the Master of Sinanju held a staying finger to Remo's bare forearm.

  "You are hopeless," Chiun muttered.

  The old Korean inserted a long index fingernail into the space between lock and door frame. He wiggled it as a burglar would a credit card. The lock clicked obediently. Sliding his nail back out, Chiun pushed. The door swung dutifully into the room.

  "Show-off," Remo said.

  "If you would surrender to the inevitable and grow your nails to their proper length, you would not have to crash and smash your way through life," Chiun sniffed.

  "Don't start," Remo warned.

  They slipped inside the lab, silent wraiths.

  The lights were on. Diffused fluorescent bulbs shone from fixtures all along the interior ceiling. More light spilled from the corridor that connected this lab to the next.

  Judith White's office door was ajar. Although her lights were on, as well, they sensed no life signs. "Death stalks this place," the Master of Sinanju intoned.

  Remo nodded. "A scientist was killed here yesterday."

  Chiun shook his head. "No," he announced, button nose upturned. "This death is recent."

  Remo pulled at the air. Immediately, the tang of human blood flooded his nostrils. It came from the corridor where the BBQs had been stored.

  Exchanging a single tight glance, both men began to move across the silent lab. They were as stealthy as jungle predators when they reached the door.

  The wide corridor where Judith had made her sloppy pass at Remo was well lit. The BBQ pens were to their left. As they moved into the long room, Remo was surprised to find more than one of the cages occupied.

  Two BBQs looked up as they entered the room. "This is the creature of which you spoke?" Chiun said, his voice pitched low. His eyes were razor slits.

  "Yeah." Remo frowned. "But there should only be one of them here." He glanced down the hall. The lights were on in the adjoining lab. Gliding weightlessly forward, their feet sliding in perfect concert, the two Sinanju Masters made their cautious way up to the other lab.

  They saw the body instantly. Freshly dead, it lay in the center of the room. Their senses told them he was alone. Sliding into the lab, they hurried over to the body.

  It was like the others. The stomach cavity had been torn open, organs consumed. One of the ears was missing.

  But unlike the other victims, this man appeared to have been slaughtered and eaten at a more languid pace. There wasn't as much blood on the floor as before. Most of it had pooled in the stomach husk.

  Standing over the body, Chiun peered down at the hollowed stomach cavity. His face betrayed no emotion.

  "This is the work of an animal," the Korean pronounced.

  "That's what everyone's saying." Remo nodded. Chiun tipped his head, considering. It was clear something weighed on his mind.

  "Care to let the rest of the Scooby Gang in on whatever's got your spider senses tingling?" Remo asked.

  Chiun gave him a withering look. "Will there ever come a time when you shut your mouth and open your eyes?"

  Remo frowned deeply. "That like one of th
ose 'Do you plan to stop beating your wife?' questions?"

  "Pah!" Chiun exclaimed. He spun on an impatient heel, heading back to the corridor.

  Remo had to jog to catch up to the swirl of dancing silk. He found the Master of Sinanju standing before the two caged animals. Remo noted that the latches on the cage doors were secure.

  "Do you still not see?" Chiun pressed.

  "You mean how do they let themselves out, kill and then get back in?" he ventured.

  "Are you so blind?" Chiun asked brusquely. "Where is the blood?"

  Remo looked around. He looked down the corridor to where they'd found the body. Finally, he looked back to Chiun. His expression was sheepish. "What blood?" he asked.

  The Master of Sinanju closed his eyes, as if too weary to display real anger.

  "If these animals are responsible for this death, then why are they not flecked with blood?"

  Remo looked more closely at the nearest BBQ. Its pale skin was as clean as a whistle. So was the other animal's skin. There were no darker patches on their black spots.

  "Maybe they licked it off," Remo suggested.

  "They could not clean away the scent of so fresh a kill from their breath," Chiun pointed out.

  The Master of Sinanju squatted down before one of the BBQs, hazel eyes intent. The odd-looking animal stared blankly back at him.

  "These things are genetically engineered," Remo offered. "Maybe they absorb smells like a box of baking soda in the fridge."

  "I know of this 'genetical,'" Chiun said. "It is the name applied to inferior breakfast cereals that masquerade as a famous product. Beyond that, these creatures are guilty of nothing more than being completely adorable."

  Remo blinked blandly. "Come again?" he asked.

  When Chiun looked up at him, his face was beaming. "Surely you must agree they are as cute as buttons."

  "Only if we're talking really ugly buttons."

  "Hush, Remo," Chiun admonished. "It will hear you." Sticking his bony arms between the bars of the cage, he pressed his hands against the animal's triangular ears. "Pay him no heed," the Master of Sinanju cooed.

  The BBQ moaned softly. Chiun squealed in delight.

  "I hate to break up this Kodak moment, Marlin Perkins, but we've still got a hollowed-out scientist in the pantry."

  Chiun's expression dismissed this as irrelevant. "Do you think Smith would allow me to take one of these marvelous creatures back to Sinanju?" he asked.

  "Does the phrase 'no way in hell' mean anything to you?"

  "I will assure him that I will feed it and walk it every day," the old man said, not listening. Chiun patted the BBQ on its long snout, his expression wistful. "Did you know, Remo, that Master Na-Kup is still heralded in the scrolls of Sinanju for bringing a camel back to my village? It was a gift from a lesser pharaoh. He called it a Mountain Beast for the shape of its hump. All the village gathered around to see it. The people were quite impressed."

  "They were probably cranking its tail to see which way the money came out," Remo said. He didn't like where this was heading.

  "Na-Kup did nothing more to distinguish himself as Master but lug one mangy camel back from Egypt. Yet here it is three thousand years later, and he is still known to all as Na-Kup the Discoverer. Surely I would be remembered even more fondly in years to come were I to return bearing something more exotic on my proud shoulders."

  "I'll buy you a cockatoo," Remo said dryly.

  "Master Cho-Lin already discovered those lice-ridden buzzards centuries ago." Chiun scowled. "Or do you not remember the fifteen hundred lines in the scrolls devoted to Cho-Lin and his Speaking Bird?"

  "Sounds like a bad Vegas act," Remo commented.

  When Chiun raised baleful eyes to Remo, they widened in surprise. He was looking beyond his pupil.

  In the infinitely short space of time that Chiun noticed Dr. Judith White, Remo became aware of her, as well. Her step was so soft, her heartbeat so low, she was at the mouth of the corridor before either of them was aware of her.

  Near the BBQ pen, the Master of Sinanju stood rapidly. The lines of his face bunched into knots of ominous tight wrinkles.

  "Judith?" Remo queried, alarmed.

  She was framed in the doorway to the main lab. Judith White was awash in blood. Her lab coat and the front of her form-hugging dress were streaked with crimson.

  "Remo?" she asked, her throaty voice oddly hesitant and distant. She reached out a hand to him. All at once, Judith's eyes rolled back in her head. Legs buckled. Without another word, she collapsed to the cold lab floor. Fainted dead away.

  Chapter 17

  "Are you certain Judith White was not responsible?" the lemony voice of Harold W. Smith pressed. Remo was on one of the lab phones. The ambulance carrying the near comatose BostonBio geneticist had left for Boston's St. Eligius Hospital five minutes before.

  "What kind of dippy question is that?" Remo asked.

  "You just told me she was still on drugs," Smith stressed.

  While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Remo and Chiun had done some snooping around. They'd found the black box with its vials and syringes in Judith's office.

  "Drugs don't turn you cannibal, Smitty," Remo said.

  "No, but perhaps she was acting in a drug-induced rage."

  "Doesn't wash. This guy wasn't just killed. His insides were gone. My money's still on the BBQs." A harrumph sounded across the room.

  The Master of Sinanju sat, cross-legged on the floor. Beside him one of the BBQs stood tethered to a desk leg. Chiun was nose to nose with the creature. "You did say she was covered with blood, yet did not appear physically injured in any way."

  "Probably fell over the body and then stumbled around in shock afterward," Remo suggested.

  "If Judith White were to blame, it would explain the artificial nail you found in the body in Concord."

  Smith had mentioned the Smithsonian's conclusion.

  "I'll check out her hands next time I see her," Remo promised. "If we ever see her alive again."

  "Why? Is there a danger to Dr. White?"

  "I don't know," Remo admitted. "Depends on what kind of junk she was pumping into herself. It seemed like she'd doubled the dose after finding the body. Her heart rate was down to next to nothing. Even Sinanju can't hear someone's heart when it's between beats. According to the guards around here, she wasn't skulking around the building anywhere, so she was probably in her office the whole time."

  "And no one else was in the lab?" Smith questioned.

  "Just her and the BBQs."

  "BBQs? Remo, you told me yesterday BostonBio had only one of the creatures back in its possession."

  "As of tonight, it's two. I'm guessing it's the one from HETA headquarters. These are homing monsters, Smitty."

  "This is puzzling," Smith mused. "If you feel Dr. White is not responsible for the most recent death, then we are left with only the animals themselves as suspects."

  "Don't forget HETA," Remo suggested. "But they couldn't have gotten in here without the guards seeing them."

  The thought occurred to both men simultaneously. "The window," Remo said, remembering the avenue HETA had used to first gain entry to the lab. "See if it has been repaired," Smith instructed.

  "I'm on it. Hold the phone, Smitty." Remo placed the receiver on the desk and hurried into the connecting hallway.

  Chiun was off the floor the instant Remo slipped into the hall. Abandoning his BBQ, he hurried to the phone.

  "Hail, Smith the Generous," Chiun intoned, pressing the receiver to a shell-like ear. He pitched his voice low.

  "Master Chiun," Smith said, surprised. "Remo had not told me you had concluded your meditations."

  "Remo has lived a lifetime of forgets, Emperor," Chiun replied. "Unlike your noble self. He was without my guidance for the duration of my philosophical pilgrimage, yet was there a single gift waiting for me upon my return? No. But his thoughtlessness no longer surprises me. And, anyway, I knew that you would not make the sa
me error. And so I must rely on you, Smith the Dependable."

  Warning lights had already flashed on in the CURE director's mind the minute a gift was mentioned. He'd dealt long enough with the wily Korean to know the beginning of a setup. Not daring to even breathe lest he unwittingly agree to some new demand, Smith prayed for Remo's rapid return.

  "The boy is inconsiderate," Chiun continued. "Not at all like you. Many are the times I have told him, 'Learn from your emperor, Remo. Make a lesson of his renowned philanthropy.' Of course, if you ask him, he will doubtless say that I have never said this to him," Chiun added quickly. "The depth of his forgetfulness is unending. But know that a day does not go by wherein I do not shout the glories of your munificence down into the empty well that is Remo's skull."

  Chiun paused. He frowned. A muffled gulp was all that issued from the earpiece.

  "Is there something wrong with your breathing?" the Master of Sinanju queried.

  Smith exhaled loudly, inhaling rapidly. "No," he panted, trying to catch his breath. "No, I am fine."

  Chiun nodded. "Excellent. So tell me, Emperor. Where may I retrieve my gift? Or have you dispatched it by herald? I cannot wait to see what it is. Do not tell me," he said hastily. "It will ruin the surprise."

  "Er...actually, Master Chiun..." Smith began hesitantly.

  "Yes?" Chiun's eyes were already narrowing with cunning.

  Smith forced the words out all at once. "I did not know it was traditional to give a gift at such a time." Chiun allowed the ensuing silence to bear the heavy burden of his great disappointment.

  "You got me nothing?" he asked eventually, voice small.

  "I am sorry," Smith apologized.

  "Oh, no, that is fine," Chiun replied quietly, bleeding from every word.

  The old Asian sounded genuinely despondent. The amount of gold Smith shipped yearly to the North Korean village of Sinanju as retainer for Chiun and Remo's services was so generous, the Master of Sinanju could have indulged any whim. Yet Smith could not help but feel a twinge of guilt.

  "I could yet get you something," Smith suggested, rapidly adding, "something small."

  Chiun sniffled. "That would be most kind, but not necessary," he moaned sadly.

  "I insist," Smith said. Already he was wondering what there was around the sanitarium that could be packaged as a gift. Mentally, he had already dropped a few notebooks and pens from the supply room into a box when Chiun broke in.