Remo found no bees. There was a praying mantis with a steely mechanical forearm and a jointed toothpick for a rear leg in a glass box, but that was as weird as it got.
Chiun frowned at all that he saw, but he said nothing.
"Okay, let's see your sick bees," said Remo.
"Allegedly sick bees," added Chiun.
They went out the back door to the bee boxes.
Wurmlinger lifted out of the hive boxes a sample honeycomb on a frame. The bees on it were absent of motion and humming.
None resembled the death's-head killer bee. Wurmlinger exposed a dozen honeycombs, including ones clogged with tiny winged blobs that had once been living bees.
"This is what foul-brood does," Wurmlinger said morosely.
"Tough."
"Insectophobe!" Wurmlinger hissed, dropping the frame back into its box.
A few bees clung to his body, and the Master of Sinanju asked, "Why do they cleave to you, if you are not the BeeMaster?"
"I wear an after-shave whose chief ingredient is bee pheromone. These bees think I am their queen."
Remo rolled his eyes. They went back into the house. Chiun drifted into the bedroom and studied the Bee-Master poster once more.
Remo looked Wurmlinger dead in the eye. "I need to ask you a question. I need you to answer it truthfully," he said.
"Yes. Of course," Wurmlinger said earnestly.
"Are you the Bee-Master?"
"No. Of course not. Everyone knows that the Bizarre Bee-Master is really Peter Pym."
Remo looked at Chiun and Chiun at Remo.
"He is telling the truth. His heart rate is normal," said Remo.
"Yes," said Chiun, nodding sagely. "Now tell us where we can find this Peter Pym."
"You cannot."
"Why not?"
"Because he doesn't exist. He's purely a figment of the imaginations of the greatest comic-book geniuses of their time, Irv Ray and Steve Starko."
"What he means," Remo explained to Chiun, "is that Bee-Master is a myth. Kinda like Mickey Mouse."
"I have met Mickey in the fur. He lives."
"Well, Bee-Master doesn't hang around amusement parks. He's strictly a paper tiger."
Removing one of the comic books from its plastic, the Master of Sinanju examined the story within.
"The artwork is terrible."
"How can you say that about Steve Starko?" Wurmlinger said.
"Everyone looks Slavic," said Chiun, dropping the comic book with undisguised disdain.
Wurmlinger lunged, catching it before it hit the floor. "Are you mad? That issue is worth over four thousand dollars in mint condition."
"People pay that much?" Remo asked.
"More for key issues. The origin of Bee-Master is worth ten. In mint, of course."
Remo muttered, "Guess I shouldn't have let Sister Mary Margaret throw mine out."
"You should sue her. It's been done."
"Forget it. She's long gone. Listen, you're the etymologist."
"Entomologist. Not to mention apiculturist," Wurmlinger said proudly.
"There's some nut out there who can communicate with bees. Just like Bee-Master. How could someone do it in real life?"
Wurmlinger's face twitched in thought. "It cannot be done. Not the way Bee-Master did it. That part of the Bee-Master legend was sheer fantasy. And I cannot see anyone possessing that remarkable ability to turn his talents to anything other than the good of mankind and the insect kingdom."
"Take it from us, these death's-head bees are under the control of a guy calling himself Bee-Master," Remo said hotly.
"Has he made public announcements?"
"No." Remo hesitated. "We know this because two of the bees talked to us."
Wurmlinger's upper lip curled. "Bees cannot speak."
"The death's-head bee does and did."
"Yes," chimed in Chiun. "We heard it plainly."
Helwig Wurmlinger looked at them both. "A bee spoke to you?" he asked.
"Yes," said Chiun.
"In English?"
"Yeah," said Remo.
"And understood you in return?"
"That's right," Remo said.
"Bees," said Helwig Wurmlinger in his most authoritative voice, "cannot speak-or understand English if they could. They do not possess a vocal apparatus. Nor are they equipped by nature with language-processing centers in their brains. Queen bees do pipe, it is true. Unfertilized females quack in responses, yes. But it is not language. There is no grammar."
"Yeah, well, bumblebees aren't aggressive, either," Remo countered, "and look how many people are dead."
Helwig X. Wurmlinger had no answer to that.
Chapter 38
Harold W. Smith was waiting for word from Remo in the field.
Waiting was often the hardest part of the dour Smith's job. He had the ability, through his computer links and telephone eavesdropping techniques, of keeping track of everyone from the President of the United States down to his own wife, Maude. With no more instruction than a flurry of keystrokes, he could tell if a telephone was in use, a specific computer was on-line or, increasingly in these days of global positioning satellites, the location of almost any car in the U.S., given sufficient search time.
But Remo and Chiun continued to vex him. They refused to carry cell phones. Remo because he kept losing them, and Chiun because the old Korean had heard on TV an erroneous report that frequent cellphone use could lead to brain cancer. Smith doubted Chiun really believed this. It was just a useful excuse to avoid dealing with what he considered annoying technology.
While he waited, Smith sifted through strange reports coming off the wires.
In the Deep South, cotton fields had been decimated. As with the ravaged cornfields in Iowa, many fields were spared. Knowing what to look for, Smith got in touch with a USDA field agent and instructed him to look for problems with genetically engineered cotton.
A preliminary report confirmed his suspicions.
"The fields are a mess down here," the USDA field agent reported, after having dialed a Washington, D.C., number that was rerouted to Folcroft Sanitarium. "The young bolls are all over the ground, like madmen have been playing toss-ball with them. Losses will be in the millions."
"Get to the point," Smith instructed.
"They have a new crop of cotton growing down here. Supposed to be genetically engineered to resist weevils and cotton bollworms by emitting a natural pesticide. That's the crop that got it. The traditional crops are just fine. It's spooky. As if the pests that did this knew exactly what they wanted to hit."
"Verify and report back to me," Smith instructed.
Next, it was Texas wheat.
"Stubble fields down here look like they have been scythed," another unwitting USDA field agent reported.
"Are the fields pest-resistant?"
"That will take a lot of proving, but that's my guess."
"Verify this theory and report back."
Smith hung up and made a grim face.
The pattern was holding. From the killing of geneticist Doyal T. Rand to this. The mastermind was attempting to wage war on that segment of humanity that had waged war against the insects of the world. But why? What was his objective? Why were there no demands or statements of intent?
He checked his wrist Timex. Remo and Chiun had to have reached Wurmlinger's home. If, as the FBI had assured him, Wurmlinger was their man, the pair would make short work of him.
When a telephone rang, Smith knew from its muffled bell that it wasn't Remo. He had dreaded this call, but knew it was coming.
Extracting the fire-engine red telephone from his desk drawer, Smith set it on his glassy desktop and lifted the handset to his ear.
"I am aware of the situation, Mr. President."
"Our breadbasket is under attack," the President said hoarsely.
"Under selective attack," Smith replied calmly.
"How can you be so calm? This is a national emergency," the President sputtered.