"It's all very hush-hush. But me and the rest of the council are getting kind of worried. Zen seems to be losing focus."
Feyodov raised a bland eyebrow. "That is of no concern to me," he said. "I am aware that you receive your money from some secret source. You pay me, and I supply that which you need. That is as far as I care."
"But I'm not sure you should leave," Gary hissed. "He's been coming unglued ever since that takeover of our ice cream company a couple years ago. With everything that's going on now, he's getting this Oliver North glint in his eye."
Feyodov scowled. "That is your problem, not mine. He leads your council until someone else takes over. If you are bothered by him, do what has been done to political opponents in Communist nations for a hundred years."
Gary's brow dropped in confusion. "Prison?" he asked.
Feyodov's eyes were flat. "Kill him."
This was obviously not the solution Gary had been hoping for. "No one ever built a socialist utopia by murdering people in cold blood," the ice cream man scolded.
"No," Feyodov agreed. "But it was not for lack of trying. Excuse me."
He turned on his heel and began marching back down the steps. Behind him, Gary hesitated for a moment before waddling unhappily back up the staircase.
Feyodov reached the main walk in front of the building and was hurrying across the grassy town square when something across the park caught his eye.
Two men were walking toward Barkley's civic center.
His eye had first been drawn to the robe the older one wore. It was red and shimmered like wet blood. Swirling patterns of embroidered gold danced across the material.
The crowd in the square was focused mostly around the building where the American cable network's charity event was being held. Even though the mob was thick before the hall, the two men moved through it like a pair of unwavering phantoms. In the great shadow cast by the huge stone statue Huitzilopochtli, they glided through the gleaming glass front doors of the distant hall and were gone.
As they vanished through the doors, Feyodov frowned.
His glasses were in the car, so he had not seen the two men well. Yet something about their comfortable gliding movements was familiar.
For an instant his brain almost allowed him to think the unthinkable. Almost at once he remembered Zen's earlier observation. He hated to admit it, but the idiot was right. Feyodov was always watching shadows. This was just another instance of his mind creating ghosts from his own fears.
Pulling in a deep breath that filled his ample belly, Feyodov forced the two men and all they represented from his mind. Ghosts. That was all. He put them behind him.
That was in the past. A place that he did not like to visit. The present was all that mattered to him now.
As he hurried to his waiting luxury car, the flat black eyes of Huitzilopochtli continued to stare dully out over the bustling activity of Barkley's main square.
Chapter 11
Smith logged off his computer at precisely 12:30 a.m.
After hours of searching, he had found nothing to indicate that the destruction of the three satellites was anything more than an unfortunate coincidence. Still, the nagging hunch that there was something more to this dogged him even as he climbed wearily to his feet.
His bones creaked as he leaned to collect his battered briefcase from beside his desk.
Remo and Chiun had left for the airport an hour ago. The CURE director feared that theirs would be a wasted trip.
At the door, Smith tugged on his heavy overcoat. On the wooden rack where it had hung, a new gray woolen scarf was draped over a dull brass peg.
The scarf had been a Christmas gift from his wife. Maude Smith had been so happy to give him something she knew he could use. Her Harold was so difficult to shop for.
She had been thrilled when he told her that it was almost exactly like a scarf he'd had as a child. He recalled many a cold Vermont night being wrapped in that scarf as he hiked to the small local library to study. That old scarf had captured all the winter aromas of his youth. It smelled of countless boiled dinners, smoke from the basement potbellied stove and his mother's pungent lye soap.
Alone in the postmidnight shadows of his office, away from prying eyes, Smith surrendered to a sudden twinge of nostalgia. Holding the scarf to his nose, he tried to get a scent of home from the wool.
There was nothing. Just the faint smell of mothballs and the even more faint indifferent aroma of a dusty old office. There was not even a hint of the neat little home he and his wife had shared for forty years.
Of course, there wouldn't be. His name might be on the mail, but his Rye residence was home only to Maude. To Harold Smith it was just a house. A place to sleep, shower and occasionally eat. His real home was here.
The sharper lines of his gaunt face softened into something resembling regret as Harold Smith drew the scarf around his narrow neck. Putting on his gray porkpie hat, he turned off the lights and left his drab office.
When he stepped through the side door to the sanitarium's administrative wing a few moments later, the cold wind that blew off Long Island Sound cut like an icy knife to his very marrow. Smith drew his scarf and collar more tightly to his neck and struck off for his car.
At this time of night the employee parking lot was practically empty.
Smith recognized all but one of the cars. It was parked in the shadows a few empty spaces down from his own. Smith assumed that a member of the skeleton crew that worked at night had gotten a new vehicle. He reached into his pocket to remove his keys.
He was clicking his key into the lock when he heard the sound of a door opening. Looking over the roof of his station wagon, he saw a figure emerge from the strange parked car.
"Dr. Smith?"
Smith was instantly alarmed. His concern intensified when he saw who it was coming toward him. It was the young medical-supplies salesman who had spent the bulk of the day sitting outside the Folcroft director's closed office door.
The man's face was flushed, his breath nervous puffs of white steam in the cold air.
"I'm probably handling this badly, but you didn't really leave me with much of a choice," he said as he approached.
Frozen and motionless, alone and unprotected in the lonely windswept parking lot, Smith was overwhelmed by a thousand thoughts flooding his mind all at once, none of them good.
"This is highly irregular," Smith said tersely. He kept his movements subdued even as he continued to stealthily unlock his door. "I do not know what you hoped to accomplish by lurking out here in the middle of the night, but you may consider our appointment canceled."
"It's a little more complicated than that," the salesman replied.
At first, Smith was worried that he would not be able to protect himself against this stranger. After all, the young man looked to be some fifty years Smith's junior. And the CURE director's automatic pistol was in a cigar box hidden deep in the back of his bottom desk drawer upstairs. But the salesman didn't seem threatening in his manner. In fact, once he got as far as Smith's station wagon, he stopped. The two men faced each other over the roof of the rusted car.
"I'm Mark Howard," the salesman said. "Your new assistant." He glanced nervously over his shoulder.
Black trees clawed up from the snow-streaked landscape around the parking area. Weak yellow overhead lights bathed the frozen asphalt.
"I know your name," Smith said. "As does my secretary." This was said as a warning. "And if you think that this is an acceptable way to seek employment, young man, you are-"
"You don't understand," Howard insisted. "I've already got the job. I'm not here to work for the sanitarium."
He glanced around once more. He gave the look of a man peering for enemies in the distant shadows. It was a habit the CURE director knew all too well.