After walking a half-mile or so, he could see, high on a cliff in the distance, the large house he had seen from the air. The odd-looking dome was invisible now, on the other side of the hacienda. Beneath the cliff, in the coffee fields, several dozen laborers, wearing straw hats against the sun, worked.
At Remo's feet lay a charred arm, ripped from the body at the shoulder. Melted into its blackened fingers was something dark that used to be a revolver.
Belloc.
And Arcadi. And Hassam. And the women. Sandy, soon. Ty. Sloops. Probably Thompson. Who would die next?
Killing was so easy, after all.
?Chapter Ten
A gray-gloved hand.
The case.
The case with the CURE telephone, the notes on Arcadi and Hassam and the others, the name of Hugo Donnelly, Smith's contact in the Department of the Interior, the preliminary printout research on the coffee plantation in Peruvina. By now, whoever took Smith's attaché case knew everything there was to know about the investigation into the heroin-laced coffee. And more.
CURE was compromised. Without doubt. The discovery of the portable telephone with its direct line to the president of the United States revealed more about the illegal nature of CURE than a thousand documents.
Smith's head swam. He became dimly aware of his surroundings, a large room sectioned off with panels of Lucite around small white beds. The beds were hooked up to monitors and all manner of science fiction-type devices. Men and women in white patrolled the room briskly, silently. A hospital. Intensive care, probably, Smith thought.
He himself was attached to a series of tubes and bottles suspended above him. A constant beep somewhere over his head announced his life functions with every heartbeat. An uncomfortable apparatus led into his nose.
Gritting his teeth with the pain, he pulled up his hospital gown to see the heavily bandaged wound on his side. It was a blur of white against his skin. Reaching carefully over to the small metal table beside him, he held his breath while he searched for his glasses and put them on. It was a large bandage, already beginning to spot with blood.
So he had been shot, after all. And the attacker was probably the same man who had eliminated the others.
Consciousness drifted in and out in waves. His fingers were cold; his vision, even with his glasses, was fuzzy. He was, he reasoned, sedated to the hilt.
Had to stay awake. Had to think.
Using an old trick he learned years before in the OSS, he bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, hard enough to send pain shooting through his head. God knew, he had enough pain already, but it wasn't the sort of attacking, localized pain he needed.
The trick had worked to keep him alert when he'd been captured and interrogated at a Nazi outpost in Danzig, when the enemy had deprived him of sleep for five days; and he'd never forgotten it. Pain made things real, kept your ideas clear. He swallowed the blood and concentrated.
There was some luck on his side. The president was out of the country, so the thief wouldn't learn of the direct link with the White House for a few days. But there was another problem, a much bigger problem: The phone in the stolen attaché case was an extension of the telephone in the office at Folcroft. Whoever had the portable phone had access to every call incoming to CURE.
He had to get back to Folcroft. He had to destroy CURE before the thief figured out that the U.S. government operated a secret agency that broke every rule of the Constitution.
The destruction of CURE meant Smith's own death, of course. The series of events leading to the dissolution of the organization had been planned in minute detail years before. Should CURE become compromised for any reason, Smith was to engage the self-destruct mechanism of the computer banks, then see to his own death. Quietly, quickly, CURE would no longer exist.
It had to be done. Now, before whoever had shot him discovered that he was still alive and returned to finish the job.
The gray-gloved hand... There was something about that hand....
There was no more time to ruminate about it. It was a hand in a glove that had pulled a trigger and then taken Smith's attaché case. Any other details were probably the result of the vast number of drugs in Smith's system.
He bit himself again to keep awake, and watched. The ICU was busy and understaffed. Most of the nurses were gathered in one section in the far corner of the ward, where an old man bleeding profusely from the head was being wheeled in. The normal scrutiny of the staff had momentarily ceased. Now was the time.
Quickly, he removed the needles from his arms and the tube from his nose. Then, struggling not to cry out in pain, he slipped from the bed and crawled to the double doors leading from the unit.
He needed clothes. Where was the supply room? Staggering, he clutched the slippery tile wall of the corridor and stopped for breath. To his horror, he saw that the wound in his side was bleeding again and spreading a large red stain on his gown. Blindly, he pulled himself along the wall, one hand after the other.
It wasn't working. Even the pain wasn't going to keep him on his feet.
Quick steps clattered toward him. "What are you doing here?" a male voice demanded.
Smith opened his eyes slowly, trying to focus. The man was dressed in white. From his neck hung a stethoscope. He lifted Smith's wrist, where his name tag was. The man looked from the name tag to the spreading red mark on Smith's gown.
"What in hell are you doing out here, Mr. Smith?" the doctor asked, appalled.
Smith tried to push him away. It was a feeble attempt.
"Orderly!" the doctor shouted.
"No," Smith whispered. "You don't understand."
"Orderly!"
Smith was only vaguely aware of another form rushing forward. "Please," he said. "You can't—"
And then the doctor was lying on the floor in the empty corridor, and Smith felt himself being lifted into the air and carried outside in a manner so gentle that it felt as though he was riding a cloud.
The yellow shape of a taxi loomed in front of him, and the next moment, it seemed, he was inside, being jostled into the white uniform he recognized as belonging to the doctor who had stopped him.
"It is not an attractive garment, but it does close in the back, o Emperor," Chiun said, visibly embarrassed.
"How did you find—"
Chiun held up a hand. "Conserve your strength. Suffice it to say you are not the only man who rests this night in a hospital."
Smith smiled. "Folcroft," he said.
The vision of the gray-gloved hand came back to him, weaving, distorted, as if seen from underwater. The smallest hand...
And then he permitted the painless blackness of unconsciousness to take over.
?Chapter Eleven
Remo made it up the almost sheer cliff face leading to the Peruvina mansion in twenty minutes. It would have taken a mountain climber in full gear an hour to make the journey; a normal man, three times that. Obviously the owner of the plantation didn't welcome drop-in visitors.
The view from the top, at the front of the house, was breathtaking. Nearly 1200 feet below, the army of laborers, prodded on by a half-dozen field bosses, stooped over the acres of coffee plants. The air was rarified and clean.
West of the cliff, Remo could make out the copse of trees where he had left Thompson. The pilot would most likely never regain consciousness before he died. But if he did, Remo thought, he would at least be aware of spending his last moments in a beautiful place with good air and the sound of birds singing.
He walked into the house through an open side door. It was magnificent, the home of a king. One wall, made of curved sheet glass, looked directly over the cliff, so that from the inside the house appeared to be floating, baseless, in the sky. The enormous room he was standing in was richly appointed with fine, tasteful furniture and works of art of a quality and antiquity usually reserved for museums.