"I hope so, Mr. President," said Smith as he hung up. Was the President correct? Smith wondered. Would things be better? Or were they so far out of control now that nothing could mend them? Chiun had just assured him that Remo was not the Detroit assassin, but why was Remo in Detroit in the first place? How had Remo found Chiun so quickly? Was it possible that the two of them were working together, at cross-purposes to Smith?
If there were one more death, Smith knew the President would dissolve CURE. He had always been prepared for that day. There was a poison pill that he would unhesitatingly take and a coffin ready to receive his body. A simple computer command would erase all the CURE files and Smith's final order would be to Chiun: eliminate Remo and return to Sinanju. There would be no trace of CURE's existence after that.
Well, one trace, Smith thought. One large one. America still survived, but no one would suspect that a secret agency had ever been responsible for that.
A chilling thought flashed into Smith's mind. Could he trust Chiun to eliminate Remo upon command? If not, then what would happen without Smith to control the two deadliest assassins in human history?
He shuddered and brought up his computer link.
Chiun had assured him that Remo would return to Folcroft immediately. That would at least be a sign that things were still in order. Smith logged onto the main computer net that recorded all flight reservations in and out of Detroit. The names and destinations began scrolling up. Smith stopped the file when he recognized the name Remo Cochran. It was one of Remo's cover identities. And Remo Cochran had confirmed reservations on a Detroit-New York flight.
Good. Now all that had to happen was for Remo Williams to walk through the gates of Folcroft Sanitarium. Then, and only then, would Smith feel that the situation was under control.
Remo drove to Detroit City Airport, turned in the keys to his rental car, and reminded the counter clerk to keep the other three vehicles, unused, in the lot for the next three months. "Just in case," he said.
Then Remo bought a one-way ticket to New York City on Midwest-North Central-McBride-Johnson-Friendly Air, which until its most recent merger five minutes before had been Midwest-North Central-McBride-Johnson Airways. The flight was delayed an hour so that crews could quickly repaint the new name on the plane, so Remo bought three newspapers and threw away the news, sports, and business sections and began reading the comics.
It took him twenty minutes to read the comics because he didn't understand them. When he was growing up, comic strips featured funny characters doing funny things. Now they seemed to be about what people ate for breakfast and how so-and-so needed a different haircut. Maybe someone someday, Remo thought, might do a comic strip that was funny again. Would anyone read it? Or had the world grown too tired for funny comic strips?
He threw away the comics and the front-page headline of one of the papers he had thrown away caught his eye. It read: "GUNMAN ATTACKS AUTOMAKERS; COPS HINT IDENTITY IS KNOWN."
Remo picked up the news sections of the three papers and read them. Each had basically the same story: a gunman had attacked Revell and Millis earlier that day but was not successful. Police said that the gunman appeared to be the same one who had wounded Lyle Lavallette earlier in the week and said he had apparently entered the press-conference area with false press credentials. While police would not release the name the gunman used, it was apparently the same name he had used earlier when Lavallette was wounded at the Detroit Plaza.
Next to the story on the shootings was another which told how Lyle Lavallette had invented an automobile which got its power from household refuse and the Maverick Genius of the Auto Industry had proclaimed this the end of the Detroit gas-burners.
When Remo put the newspapers down, his face wore a stricken expression. The gunman who had attacked today had struck three days ago-while Remo was out in the desert-and had used the name Remo Williams at that time too. Why hadn't Chiun told him? What were Chiun and Smith trying to keep from him?
Remo ripped the articles from the paper and jammed them into his pocket.
"I thought you were leaving town," the rental agent said when Remo reappeared at the booth.
"Changed my mind," Remo said. "I'm going to take one of my three cars. Give me the keys."
"Fine, sir. Here they are. Would you like to rent a replacement car to leave in the lot?"
"No. The two I've got there should be enough. I need directions to American Automobiles."
"Just take the Parkway west. You'll see the signs," the clerk said.
Remo nodded and left the airport. He was so angry that, as he drove, his fingers dug into the warm plastic of the steering wheel as if it were taffy. Chiun had lied to him. There was something going on, something that both Chiun and Smith were hiding from him. But what could it be? Who was this gunman who was using his name? Remo could have gotten him today if it had not been for Chiun grabbing Remo's ankle and preventing him from giving chase.
He concentrated, trying to remember the man's face. There was something familiar about him, something around the eyes. Where had he seen those eyes before, dark, deep-set, and deadly?
And he remembered. He saw those eyes every time he looked into a mirror. They were his own eyes.
Remo was doing ninety on the Edsel Ford Parkway. Screw Chiun. Screw Smith. There was something going on and Remo was going to find out how it concerned him.
The newspapers had gotten one fact wrong. All three had written that the gunman had sprayed shots at both Revell and Millis, but Remo had been there. He had seen the man take his stance, had seen the angle of the shot, and he knew that James Revell had been the intended target. The gunman had shot Lyle Lavallette and killed Drake Mangan and tried to kill James Revell. Only Hubert Millis was left on the list. Remo wanted to see that gunman again. All he had to do, he was sure, was attach himself to Hubert Millis and wait.
He hoped it wouldn't be a long wait.
At Folcroft Sanitarium, Smith saw by his watch that the flight on which Remo was booked had left Detroit City Airport ten minutes before. He called a New York service and arranged for a private limousine to meet the passenger who traveled under the name of Remo Cochran and bring him directly to Rye, New York.
That done, he drew a paper cup of spring water from his office cooler and settled down to call up the news-digest file from his computer. It was a constantly running data collector that keyed off the wire services and network media computers. Smith had programmed it to collect only those reports that contained certain buzzwords that indicated CURE might be interested. Stories about corrupt politicians would automatically be downloaded into the CURE files by the word "corruption." An arson story would wind up in the same file, keyed by the word "arson."
The constantly expanding file kept Smith up-to-date on slow-breaking events that might one day mushroom into a priority situations for CURE. And when they got into priority situations and all other possible solutions had failed, Remo Williams-the Destroyer-was called on. The Ravine Rapist had been just such a case. There was no question of the man's guilt, but apprehending him and trying him and convicting him was so long and so unsure a process that many other innocent people might have been killed along the way. Remo prevented such a waste.
Smith speed-read his way through the file. He took no notes, although lately he had noticed his memory was not so sharp as it once was and notes would have helped. But notes were dangerous so he forced his memory to respond.
When Smith came to the string of reports concerning the shootings in Detroit, he reached for the button that would skip over that section, but he was stopped by a sidebar cross-reference: