Part 4 (2/2)

”Nothing pressing,” Smith admitted. ”You and Master Chiun may enjoy the time off while I am away.”

”You know I'd prefer to keep busy. C'mon, Smitty, there must be something.”

Smith was surprised at Remo's eagerness to work.

It was not long before that he had been pus.h.i.+ng for a vacation.

”Remo, if I had an a.s.signment, I would use you. There is simply nothing large enough to warrant putting you into the ?eld at the present time.”

”I'm not a tractor, Smitty.” His tone bordered on disgust.

Smith raised a thin eyebrow. ”Is there something more to this than a simple desire to keep busy?”

Remo sighed. ”You should be a shrink,” he said glumly.

”I actually do hold a doctorate in clinical psychology,” Smith noted.

”Yeah, right,” Remo said absently. ”It's just that there's always something more to do. One more creep determined to wreck the world for everybody else. Pagget left that nun barely breathing.”

”She died this morning,” Smith said tightly.

”I heard,” Remo replied. His voice was laced with bitterness. ”A fat lot of good I did her. I'm great at retribution, Smitty. What I stink at is getting there in the nick of time.”

”Perhaps I am not the best person with whom to discuss this,” Smith said, clearly uncomfortable. ”Have you spoken to Chiun?””He thinks it's the same old story. Every year I get the blahs about the business. But it really isn't the same this time. I can't explain it. It's as if I know there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done, but I ?nally realize that I can't do it all. I mean really realize it.” Remo exhaled loudly. ”I don't know. Maybe it's time I ?nally packed it in.”

Smith had only been half listening while Remo spoke. Like Chiun, the CURE director had grown used to Remo's frequent bouts of melancholia. But when he raised the desire to abandon the dangerous life he was in, Smith took notice.

The CURE director frowned. ”Remo, someone told you something a long time ago. He used to say the same thing to me. 'One man can make a difference.'”

He heard a pensive intake of breath on the other end of the line as Remo considered the words.

”I don't think I believe that anymore,” Remo said after a long, thoughtful pause.

Smith pressed ahead. ”It was true enough for him. Conrad MacCleary believed that his entire life. That was why he recruited you.

He knew that you could make a difference.”

”MacCleary died more than twenty years ago,” Remo countered. ”He never lived in this America. He never saw anything as bad as what's going on out there today.”

Smith paused. How could he tell Remo of the shared horrors Smith and MacCleary had witnessed as members of the OSS during World War II? It was a time when darkness threatened to engulf the entire planet. Subsequent generations had never known such a struggle. It was already history before Remo was even born.

In the end Smith decided not to even try.

”I will try to ?nd something for you,” the CURE director promised.

”Thanks, Smitty,” Remo said. The news appeared to do nothing to lift his spirits.

Smith hung up the phone, turning his attention back to his computer.

While he had been talking to Remo, a news story had come in from one of the wire services. Smith had failed to notice the interruption on his computer screen. The electronically reproduced story had waited patiently for his perusal.

Smith's lemony features grew more pinched as he read the details, spa.r.s.e for now.

There had been several large explosions in the north of France during the night. All at deminage depots. The French government was attributing the nocturnal blasts to recent procedural changes in the storage of old war supplies. Unwise changes, it had turned out.

The interior minister, speaking on behalf of the president, had a.s.sured the public that in the future there would be no more such alterations in the handling of the dangerous items warehoused on the bases. In the meantime the military and police were conducting house-to-house searches in the towns around the blast sites. They stressed that they had no desire to alarm the public, but they admitted that there was a possibility that some of the unexploded mustard-gas sh.e.l.ls that had been stored on the bases could have been corrupted in the blasts. The gas would have been released during the explosions. They wanted to be certain that everyone in the surrounding communities was all right.

Something about the report struck Smith as false. Of course the mustard-gas sh.e.l.ls would have gone off along with everything else.

Why would the French army be involved for so simple a matter as this? Surely the gas would have dissipated long before it reached a populated area.

Smith dumped the story from the screen and began typing swiftly at his special capacitor keyboard. In a moment he had accessed the private lines within the Paris headquarters of the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, or DGSE.

Electronic mail inside France's premier spy organization was ?ying fast and furious. No one seemed to know precisely what was going on, but one thing was certain. The army was not conducting a door-todoor search for mustard-gas victims.

The explosions at the depots were not large enough, the resulting devastation not great enough, to account for all of the stored ordnance. According to reports, there were tire tracks leading away from every site.

All indications pointed to the fact that a ma.s.sive amount of unstable surplus World War II explosives had been stolen. By whom and for what end had yet to be determined.

Smith was reading the most recent memos, dated 3:02 p.m. Paris time, when his computer beeped impatiently. His system had found something that warranted the CURE director's attention.

Smith quickly exited the DGSE network and returned to his own system. He found a fresh news report waiting for him.

The ?rst stories were coming in of the bombing at the American Emba.s.sy in Paris. Smith read them with growing concern. Some members of the press were already connecting the Paris bombing with the explosions far north of the city.

When he had ?nished reading the news reports, Smith sat back in his creaking leather chair, considering. Through the one-way window behind him, Long Island Sound lapped lazily at the sh.o.r.e below Folcroft's rear lawn.

His plane took off from JFK International Airport at ?ve that evening. It was a direct transatlantic ?ight to London's Heathrow Airport. His wife's itinerary wouldn't bring them to France for another two days.

If the situation there-whatever it might becould be cleared up before then, there wasn't much of a chance he and Remo would run into one another.

It would also give Remo something to keep his mind off quitting the organization.

The decision was made.

Chair creaking as he leaned forward, Smith reached for the phone.

Chapter 7.

Helene Marie-Simone watched as the medical examiners pried the charred bodies from within the twisted remnants of the truck's cab. They cracked like crusted bread sticks.

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