The chairs were outfitted with large wooden wheels, which were functional enough when it came to moving the heavy chairs from one place to another but were not designed for locomotion. Despite the long decline of the lawn, the hotel management had never worried about one of their chairs rolling off with one of their patrons. Maybe they should have.
The chair shot across the lawn like a rocket, the front legs sheering off so that the front end flattened on the neatly mown grass. One of the federal-trained Union Island security agents was scooped off his feet. He collapsed onto the chair and then just kept going, zipping down the hill at a speed that should have been impossible.
The security detail responded with raised eyebrows, and the other tall agent, the one with the darkest sunglasses of all, showed real concern.
Remo was mildly impressed when the man in the fleeing lounge chair had the wherewithal to operate his radio. "This is Samson-I'm under attack!"
"Oh, shit!" said the agent in charge, snatching at his two-way radio. "Samson, this is Hercules-maintain radio silence! We've got journalists in the vicinity."
"Did you hear me?" squawked the panicking agent. "I'm under attack!"
The Union Islanders ran off in pursuit. The speeding lounge chair lost its wooden wheels a few yards short of the end of the lawn, spun sideways and slammed into the white picket fence. Wood splinters flew in all directions. The chair and its occupant vanished into the brush-filled drop-off beyond. The running bodyguards tried to slow down but realized the slope of the lawn wasn't as gentle as it looked. They tried to stop, but they just kept on going....
"Thought they'd never leave," Remo muttered, entering the men's room. He moved with inhuman silence, and Greg Grom, president of Union Island, never knew the Master of Sinanju was with him.
It was a while before Remo emerged again, breathing for the first time in minutes. "Well, that was a lot of work for nothing," he said to no one in particular. He had been convinced he was going to catch Greg Grom red-handed accepting a pickup of whatever poison he was using, but all that happened in the men's room was what was supposed to happen in the men's room.
Dammit, he wanted to be right about this.
He hadn't seen that minivan that parked out front. There were lots of cars coming and going and this one wasn't unusual, except that the driver wore a navy-blue jumpsuit with a logo on the pocket. He checked his clipboard and jumped from the van, yanking on the sliding door and rummaging in the back. He found a heavy, square box with several Warning! tags, skull-and-crossbones labels and the occasional Danger-Poison label.
"I'm looking for the United States Protectorate of Union Island tour bus," he asked the bus driver.
"You found it."
"I'm the SIC man." His eye twitched involuntarily.
"Sorry to hear that."
"I'm from Ship It Carefully. We have a package."
"Hello!" Grom said, wiping his hands on his pants as he came from the restaurant. He had no idea where his security team had got to, but that was just as well. With a minimum of fuss he showed his ID to the deliveryman, and then practically ran inside the bus with the package. The SIC man wished people would treat their deliveries with a little more respect. The company slogan was Special Shipment? Ship SIC!, but special was euphemistic. They delivered dangerous chemicals, flammables, other specialty items that UPS and FedEx and those other wussies wouldn't touch. SIC had all the hazardous-materials transport permits, federal and state.
They were as expensive as hell. So you would think that people who accepted a package from SIC would treat it with a little dignity. Not go running up the bus steps like a kid with a box of candy.
The side of the SIC man's face spasmed nervously. He returned to his minivan and closed the door-gently. He checked all his rearview mirrors and turned in his seat twice before backing out of the parking place. He drove five miles under the speed limit all the way down the mountains and back into North Carolina, face twitching all the way, but the angry honking of other drivers never bothered him in the slightest. It took a special kind of man to be a SIC man.
AS THE SCRATCHED and tattered army of security agents clambered up the hill, Remo walked away, finding the hiking trail and feeling disconsolate.
He had expected Greg Grom to accept delivery of a package in the men's room at the restaurant. It would have made sense. It would have solved his dilemma. It would have answered a lot of questions. And for once it would have been Remo Williams who did the solving. Sure, it was a long shot. Mark Howard thought so. Chiun had been so sure Remo was wrong he hadn't even bothered to wait around to see the facts prove Remo wrong.
Distantly he heard the tour bus start up and minutes later it low-geared down the Blue Ridge Park past him. Over the fragrance of pine needles and mountain ferns Remo tried not to breathe the diesel smell and just as unsuccessfully tried to come to a decision about what to do next.
He would not rejoin the Union Island entourage. What was the point?
He kind of liked the woods. Maybe he'd just hike his way through the Smoky Mountains for a few weeks, catch his dinner out of the cold freshwater mountain streams, maybe nab any abortion-clinic arsonists he happened to cross paths with along the way.
It wasn't like he'd be missed by Upstairs. He hadn't exactly been doing them a lot of good in recent days. Two things made him stop where he was, on a small rock overlooking a vast space between the mountains. The first thing was the thought that he was feeling awfully effing sorry for himself.
The second was the smell.
It wasn't a smell that belonged in the mountain woods. And it wasn't the diesel smell from the bus, but it had come with the diesel smell and was fading with it. It was chemical and vaguely familiar.
"Mother of crap!" Remo Williams exclaimed when he recognized the smell.
"Crap crap crap," the mountains echoed. "I was right!"
There was silence.
"I said I was right!" Remo shouted, making it very loud.
"Right right right right," the mountains echoed. "That's better," Remo said. "This doesn't happen often, and I want credit for it."
HE JOGGED BACK to the mountaintop restaurant and grabbed a pay phone in the hotel lobby, leaning on the 1 button until the phone system connected him. The voice that answered was not a voice he knew. "Aloo?"
"Who's this?" Remo demanded. "Why, it's Beatrice, luv."
"This is Agnes up the street."
"Agnes, my dear, how are-"
"Give me Smitty, would you?"
A moment later the familiar voice of the director of CURE came on the line. "Where are you, Remo?"
"Hey, Smitty, your new receptionist sounds hot."
"She's not real, Remo. It's the new voice verification system."
"Save it for later, Smitty. I've got news. I've tracked down the source of the run-amokers down south."
"What? Where are you?"
"Uh." Good question, actually, Remo thought. "Some big hill. Don't have time to explain. I've got a bus to catch. Go ask Junior."
"Mark knows about this?"
"Sort of."
"What about Chiun?"
"Departed. Vamoosed."
"I don't think I understand...."
Remo could feel the bus getting farther away, and his patience getting shorter with every passing second and every particle of misgiving transmitting through the line. "Here's the situation in a nutshell-and I know it's gonna be a real mindblower, Smitty. The truth is, I figured it out. I homed in on the clues, I followed up on 'em. I solved it."
"So where is Chiun?" Smith asked.
"Dammit, Smitty, I did it. Just me. Chiun had nothing to do with it. Truth is, he was tagging along until he got fed up and went home."